Worshipful Raucous...

I want to tell you about something really cool I saw/experienced a couple weeks ago.

The church I have been going to held a worship event one night. There is a place near me that has a large, outdoor park area. Its in the middle of this strange town thats not really a town at all, but a collection of stores that are made to look like a town. But this park-like thing at the center of it is pretty cool. They have a fountain that you can run through, benches everywhere, and a big grassy area. Every once in a while, they hold small concerts there; usually people playing cover songs, but on this night, my church teamed up with a few other local churches and held a worship night.

They created a sort of super-worship band out of all their different bands, set up a screen to display lyrics on, and took over this park-thing-area for an hour.

It was pretty awesome. A lot of people were there, and it was a little hard to actually worship unless you got pretty close to the stage. Did I mention this was the night before my birthday? That made it all the more awesome.

As I was saying, you needed to be pretty close to actually be able to worship, but it was still really cool seeing everyone hang out together while others were worshipping. People had brought lawn chairs, blankets, and kids were running all over, playing with all the other kids

Side note, don't you wish it was that easy to make friends still? You could just walk up to someone that looked about your age, ask their name, and then start making up random rules to a random game, and before you know it you'd be bffs. I miss those days.

Anyways, there were a lot of people, it was a cool, laid back kind of atmosphere, and we were just worshipping. Some of the songs were a little too-cool-hipster-church-like, so I didn't know all of the words, but the ones I did, I belted out (much to the disappointment of those around me). 

And during this time, I finally felt connected to God. Its been a really strange experience moving away, and even though I've been doing this because I knew God wanted me to and had created this opportunity for me, I was letting all of the other worries choke out His presence and hadn't really felt like He moved with me. 

This night was different though. I felt like I could actually worship Him, even though I wasn't standing in my home church and it wasn't a band I was familiar with, and I didn't even know all the songs, but I was worshipping and felt like God was right there.

Did I mention there are quite a few trees in this park area? Thats an important detail.

After one of the first few songs had finished and there was a moment of silence (or as close to silence as you can get at an outdoor convert event), all you could hear was the chattering of birds that had taken up residence in the trees in this park. And it was LOUD. Sometimes huge flocks of birds will travel together and fly from area to area, making tons of noise and eating up whatever is on the ground that they've covered, but they always move on fairly quickly. 

Not these birds.

They stayed the whole time we were there worshipping.

And then I remembered lyrics to a worship song we sang on a missions trip to NC…

"…birds in the sky sing their songs to You…"

And that's just what they were doing. I kid you not, they were only there for the amount of time our group was. Just for the worship. Singing their songs, too.

How many times do we sing songs in church that talk about creation worshipping God, the earth crying out, "…all creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and with us sing, Hallelujah…"? Well, they were singing out a lot louder than we were. 

Isn't that just so cool?

Wanted to share that moment with all of you...however many there are that actually read this....anyone out there?

Also, since I don't have Instagram or Facebook, I'll just have to post more pictures here for you. First off, I want to show you a sunset outside my window. I have a fantastic view and the sun always sets right out my window. One thing I have to give Ohio props for is it's sunsets…something about this weird flat place that makes the sun reflect off the clouds miraculously. So enjoy the following pictures:

I mean, come on, weren't those just awesome?

Next, I just have to show you what I made for dinner tonight. Look at it, in all its glory:

That, my friends, is a plate of homemade bacon cheesy fries, garnished with a dollop of sour cream and some fresh-ground pepper sprinkled over the top. Not surprisingly, it took waaaay faster to consume than it did to create, but it was worth every ounce of effort. Be jealous.

Remember that time living on my own meant eating whatever I wanted for dinner? Now, on to some baking...lemon cookies anyone??