That summer feeling...

All of a sudden I felt a longing for summer.
Walking around my grandma's garden
watching all the blooming flowers,
listening to the bees buzzing
and smelling the earth.
Feeling the heat of the sun in a silent moment,
then to be refreshed by a cool wind.
Hearing my grandma calling my name
to tell me the waffles and limonade are served.
Later to ride my bike through the golden fields on my way home
thinking that I'm very blessed to have a grandma with a cottage and a garden.

"Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark."
(Rabindranath Tagore)

New experience

It seems like half the population of Oslo are sick these days. I've just had my turn. It's so incredibly boring being sick! I hate it! Fortunately these harse colds don't last too long. I'm almost well again.

I had an interesting experience though. During the weekend I was on a trip with a nice bunch of youth leaders from the church at Jessheim. Among other things I was going to lead the worship. My only problem was that I had no singing voice whatsoever. A lot of the time I could only whisper. How interesting to lead worship without being able to sing! I was able to talk loud enough for them to hear me (barely), but singing was hopeless. Still I really felt like I was leading them in worship.
Again that reminded me about what's important when leading worship. It's not about the singing. Of course not! It's about reminding them of who he is and why he is worthy of our time, focus, and praise, isn't it? And about helping them to let go of distractions and other things that keep them from giving him their all.
It was a cool feeling standing not quite in front of them, sort of hiding behind the pianist, just trying to focus on God without being able to hit a note, and every once in a while I'd say something that I felt God may have wanted me to say...
I guess the best way of leading worship is to worship God yourself. Sometimes I feel like God says that to me before I am going to lead worship. I might be a little bit stressed or nervous, or maybe I really really want something exciting to happen, so I ask God how I'm going to do this. Then I often feel like he says "Just worship me!"
That's a relief.

Oh no! Not another blog about church?…

There are so many of the blogs I drop by that talk about church. House churches, emerging churches, church this and church that... Even though I find it important and interesting, I have also thought that I’m not going to be one of those "church bloggers". Mostly because there are so many wise people saying many wise things about the subject, and I tell myself I have nothing to add.

But now I’ve changed my mind! I have many different kinds of friends. Friends that read my blog. Some are christians, some are not. Some are christians that know a lot about the bible, and some are not. Some have good experiences with the consept “church” and some actually have really bad experiences. People have totally different ideas about what church really is.

Some of my friends believe the church is a building. Mere building. Some other people realize church is more than that, but still have some ideas of the building as something holy in itself. Others know that church really is the fellowship between christians, but still refer to some building as “the church”. I have had great experiences lately that church has got nothing to do with a building!

I belong to a church that owns no building. We meet in each other’s homes every week or as often as we feel like hanging out. I have not lived a more exciting life than after I became part of this church. That is because we function like a church is supposed to. We meet. We eat and have a good time. We catch up with each other. We praise and worship God. We read the bible. We encourage each other. We try to let the holy spirit flow. We don’t need a special building for this to happen! It can happen anywhere.

I want my christian friends that belong to other fellowships to feel free to have church anywhere at anytime. (Its very biblical!) And I want my not-christian friends to understand that being a christian is not about services sunday morning in some holy building. It’s about being changed and starting living the life God created you to live, among fellow christians. No building is holy. God doesn’t dwell in a building anymore (like he used to in Israel). He dwells in every person that received him! That’s why we can have church anywhere at any time! (And that’s how they did it in the bible!) Church is a great thing!