a pentecost-like experience

so at the moment I am staying with a couple of family friends in kitchener, ontario. they are both deeply involved in the work of the church, and before they got married, he spent about 12 years doing mission work in ukraine. since their marriage, they have gone back to ukraine at least once a year to continue the work he began those years ago.

during my stay, they have shared a lot with me about their experiences there, and he particularly has encouraged me strongly to consider going to ukraine to help out with the work, and get some mission experience. the longer i stay here, the more the idea excites me. so i'm praying about that, we'll see what becomes of it.

but another thing they shared with me was the music they got there. i really like the band hillsong and hillsong united, christian praise groups, becuase i find their music to be very catchy and exciting, and their lyrics are so full of faith and honoring of God. and i knew that hillsong did international travel- i'd heard their cd the IHeart Revolution, and it has some of their songs sung in spanish- so i wasn't too surprised when they mentioned to me that they had some hillsong cds in Russian.

but when they played the music for me... it was unreal.

when i recognized a song like Mighty to Save i began singing along with it as i know it- in English. i tried to listen as i sang, and i could hear the languages intermingling and coiling up together like something so beautiful. and as i think that the singers on the track and myself are both lifting up praises to a God who truly understands all of us... it just makes me so excited. it makes me realize how much bigger God is than me and my language and my country. God isn't a god who only speaks English, who only understands English.

this realization reminds me of pentecost, where the early church had that incredible Holy Spirit experience, and all the people began to prophesy in their own native languages. i now have a glimpse of what that may have sounded like, as i sang english along with a track of russian hillsong. as the languages went together there was just this... inexplicable beauty about it.

it also makes me think, it's so amazing that music can connect groups of people who may never otherwise be able to communicate or understand each other. i felt a strange sort of kinship with the people on the track, eventhough i knew that if i ever met them, i wouldn't be able to speak a word they'd understand, and vice versa. but i knew that there was somehting common between us, and it was bigger than the mere knowledge of the melody of that song. i knew that our hearts at that point in time were beating to the same rhythm, and that that rhythm matched the Father's. that although we are separated by oceans and land and language and culture, we are united somehow, through faith.

and seriously, how sweet is that?!

out.