This past week I was read an article that asked, “What makes your heart sing?” The question hit me deep inside my soul, and stirred up an instant and strong reaction. Without even thinking I knew the answer, and I wrote it in the margins of the article with gusto and vigor, I was almost hyperventilating when I finished writing. Then, I stopped myself for a moment, and wondered what just happened? Five simple words on a paper caused my heart to seemingly palpitate, and instinctively and passionately I wrote. So what happened in my soul between the spaces of those five words? Vision. Those five words did not evoke a five year plan, or a list of programs and books. It stirred my soul to paint a picture of a way of being. Those words asked me to cast a vision that at its core asked me to dig deep into who God created me to be.
As these words began to sink in I heard echoes of Jesus in John 10:10, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Jesus words in this verse stir up for me many of the same feelings that I felt as I read, “What makes your heart sing?” Jesus you mean I have a song? I was made to sing, to shout from the mountaintops, to do something with such passion, such creativity, such gusto, it could only have been from God? And in the midst of this I wondered: was my song was good enough, or grand enough, or better yet what in goodness name did it mean or look like to live into it? I knew one thing very clearly: I want it. Whatever makes my heart sing, I want to pursue it. Whatever this abundant life that Jesus speaks about in John 10:10 means, I want to be the first one signed up, to be “all in” for it.
You were created to sing. Maybe not in front of a microphone, but you were created to sing a song to God. Sing a song of justice or discipleship, a song that cries out for orphans and widows, a song that hurts for bullied children, lonely seniors, and women stuck in a cycle of abuse; a song of worship, service, mentoring, or hospitality. Your heart is made to sing a song that God placed inside of it. Frederick Buechner describes it this way:
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
Jesus came so that we might have the abundant life, that we might sing a song from deep in our souls that glorifies God, and is far from ordinary. So what is your song? What makes your heart sing? What abundant life does Jesus have for you, and what will it take to live into it?
Pastor Bill