Sing The Story
“At the end of the day I wanna hear people say, my heart looks like Your heart, my heart looks like Your heart. When the world looks at me, let them agree that my heart looks like Your heart, my heart looks like Your heart.”
Your Heart, from the musical, The Story
In this song, Your Heart, (one out of the ten songs that we sang on choir tour) the first line of the chorus says “I wanna hear people say, my heart looks like your heart,”. I love this line of the song because it shows why we were performing. We were there to pour out love and joy on these people, not necessarily our own love and joy, but God’s abundant and overflowing love and joy in our hearts.
I should get back to what I want to tell you all about. Recently I had the pleasure to go on choir tour with my fellow classmates. Choir tour is what you’d probably think it to be. The RVA Choir went to four venues around Nairobi, including a church, an orphanage, a couple schools, and even our own RVA community. We sang ten songs from The Story (a musical), and had a few readers share some Bible stories in between the songs. After the performance we would go out and talk or play with the kids who were in the audience. If we were performing in the morning, they would usually serve us lunch and in one case eat with us.
Have you ever wanted to be applauded loudly and enthusiastically by a crowd? So do those auditioning for The Voice or American Idol, which we’ve been watching recently. But you know, I’m not all that different. Although most of the time I would be overjoyed to receive this attention and keep it to myself, I’ve been trying to remind myself that I should really point it back to Christ and give Him the glory.
As the choir met together every night at the Nairobi school we were staying at, we would talk about our day and what had happened. Many times, my fellow choir classmates would have great things to say, like they had a good conversation with a kid or a little miracle had happened for them. I remember talking about one specific thing that was on most of our minds one night, “Why are we performing for these students/kids if they don’t seem to enjoy it?”
Before and after we performed for some of the venues, they were very welcoming and fun, but while we were singing, many of us noticed that they didn’t look too engaged. Even though this may have made us discouraged a bit, I think most of the audience was listening to us and engaging even if it didn’t look like it. God may have spoken in and to many of these people’s hearts without us seeing it happen. I trust that through it all, God used us to share Christ’s love and His story to many.
Before you go on with your day, I want to share some things about my incredible choir teacher. She’s been one of the best parts of choir, even my entire school day! Mrs. Battermann (Aunt Darilyn) is a passionate, loving, fun, godly, encouraging woman and I daily see God speaking in and through her. She makes choir class so fun and encouraging by putting in effect special things that we do each day:
- Mystery Monday
- Testimony Tuesday
- Words of wisdom/wiggles Wednesday
- Thought-provoker Thursday
- Fearless Friday
Throughout these special activities, Aunt Darilyn finds a way to incorporate fun and faith into it. Either with praying before we start jumping into songs or giving a student an encouragement note, she definitely is someone whose priority in life is Jesus and our choir class loves her!