How to Sing

1. Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord:

“I will sing to the Lord,
    for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
    he has hurled into the sea.  Exodus 15

How do you sing to the Lord?  It doesn't have to be through song.  (Thank goodness, because my husband can't carry a tune)  You can sing through what you say, what you write, or even what you do.  What we do to praise the Lord, is the way we can each sing in our own way to the Lord.

This last weekend, my husband took me to a fundraiser that his boss was in charge of planning.  We were really excited about this.  It was a chance to dress up and go on a date, which isn't something we do very often with a two year old at home.  Also, my husband had an absolutely terrible week at work immediately preceding this.  He was really stressed out over work, so this gave him a nice excuse to take his mind off of things at the office.  The events scheduled for the fundraiser were a silent auction, fashion show, and stand up comedians.  We had a genuinely nice time sitting and chatting with a few of his coworkers while we waited for the events to start.

The events started and we all gathered into the auditorium.  He and I sat away from his coworkers (some of whom had used that as the opportunity to duck out without anyone seeing them leave).  First up was the fashion show, where they also announced the winners of the silent auction.  It was a little cheesy, but nothing too horrible.  Then we moved into the stand up comics.  The first three went and they did get progressively better, but by no means were they great.  Then, the last one came on.

I had high hopes.  Really, I did.  I wanted this one to be worth saving for last.  His jokes fell flat, there were a number of groans, and he just plain wasn't funny.  I don't know that I even cracked a smile once during his set.

And then it went from bad to worse.  Somehow he segued from Harry Potter "jokes" to Jesus "jokes."  I'm not a prude, I'll laugh at jokes where the subject matter is Christianity - provided that it's funny and not hurtful.  These were blatantly offensive, so I will not pass any of those along, but trust me on this.

I was torn.  I knew that as a Christian, I shouldn't stand for this.  I wanted to get up and walk out, not even trying to hide the fact that I was leaving.  I would have walked right in front of the stage had we been sitting in a location that allowed for it.  But, on the other hand, I'm here at an event for my husband, and he had a terrible week at work.  Being here is probably helping his image with his coworkers.  Do I want to be potentially seen as the crazy wife?

I decided that, yes, I did.  I leaned over to my husband and told him that I was ready to leave at any time and his response was just, "Ok."  With that, we grabbed our jackets, put them on while still standing in our row and walked out to the door.  We made no attempt at hiding what we were doing.  We were making a statement that we were not OK with this so-called entertainment.

Through our actions, we sang to the Lord.  We sang to say that he is respected, he is highly exalted, and he is not one to be offensively mocked.  And other people saw this.  What we didn't realize as we walked out the door, was that his coworkers saw us, and when they saw us reach the door, they followed suit.

You don't have to carry a tune to sing and to raise your voices together in a chorus.  Sometimes, you don't even have to say a word.