Undignified

Today I read Psalm 150, that wonderful psalm urging me to praise God in pretty much every way - with cymbals, with lutes, with stringed instruments, with flutes, with dance, etc. I love it! It makes me feel so excited about praising God.

My most memorable meeting with this psalm took place sometime in high school, at a Christian summer camp (for those of you are familiar with it, it was an Awana camp). Most of the adults running this camp were rather conservative, strait-laced individuals; there was a way things ought to be, and they wanted everything to be done with the right amount of order and decorum. So there were either explicit or unspoken rules for everything.

I was on the praise and worship team that year, and there was an unspoken rule that the music we played should be more traditional than contemporary and rather on the slower side than the faster. Naturally, being young and full of energy and passion (and also being slightly rebellious but not wanting to do anything actually wrong because we were overall good kids), we chafed at this expectation at times. The song that embodied this feeling for us was "Undignified" - which I hadn't heard before at the time but which I liked, and still like. For someone like me, who tends to want to maintain a proper order and appearance for things and for myself, it is a really good encouragement to trust God, set aside pride, and risk living my life wholly for Him. It's rather a crazy song, though, and the powers-that-be at the camp didn't look upon it very acceptingly.

But we thought of Psalm 150, and how the writer says to praise God with dance, and all kinds of instruments, and clashing cymbals, among other things, and we thought to ourselves, well, we'll just read this psalm before the song, and then they'll see that we have a Biblical foundation for it so we won't get in trouble. But who should read it? To make the whole thing seem even more acceptable, we asked the pastor that year (each summer a different pastor spoke) to read the psalm. And did he ever read it! He was an old-school Baptist preacher, with a bit of a Southern accent, and he read that psalm in such a way as to highlight those things, with volume and passion and intensity. It was amazing. We had no clue ahead of time that he was going to read it like he was at a revival meeting! Anyway, it was the perfect introduction to our song, which all the other campers loved, and we didn't get in trouble (although some of the adults most definitely seemed rather shocked by the whole affair!)

So now whenever I read Psalm 150, I hear a deep preacher's voice booming out the words, and I feel the excitement beginning to build in my chest, and I hear the music starting while he was still reading, and I see all of us going crazy. And I wonder if anyone else who was there still remembers that, and still wants to live a life full of praise for God, sold out for Him even if it means looking foolish to those who don't understand. Was it all emotion, carried away and lifted up in the beat of the music, or were we grounded in a deep and genuine love of God? My prayer is that it was the latter, and that all of us who were there will continue to praise God with passion and learn to follow Him with humility.