Therapy of Worship

     If you know me at all, you would know that I love animals and have almost always had pets during my adult life. A few months ago I purchased a couple of canaries. I had just lost my third Kakariki bird, leaving one more, a bald one. I wanted a change from larger birds to smaller ones, ones that sing, ones that don't make such a mess. One of the canaries was a beautiful orange one, Victor and a white one, Plexi. They were beautiful to look at but the only one that made any sound was Victor, on occasion. Plexi would just yell every once in a while when it was fighting with Victor. They were jealous over the chopped apples or pears I gave them. This wasn't what I was expecting out of singing birds. A couple of weeks ago, I inherited a little kitten, was a little concerned about how Victor and Plexi were going to get along with "Tiger", (I know, I know, I wasn't flowing in creative juices at the time of renaming it from Cheyene, a name I had to reach for in my memory each time I thought of it). Well.... I got my answer the first morning, I found the bird cage across the room on the floor, Tiger managed to extract Victor from the cage without even opening the door, leaving just a few feathers as evidence. What was amazing was that Plexi wasn't touched at all. I was surprised Plexi hadn't had a heart attack. Needless to say, Plexi wasn't going to do any singing for awhile. Neither baldy nor Plexi made a sound for quite some time.

  The other day, I was streaming praise and worship music from KTIS out of Minneapolis.  The song, "What a beautiful name" came on. Suddenly the most beautiful sound of singing and whistling started flowing out of Plexi. After all of the trauma, this bird has gone through, it was worship that brought it back to life.
    It reminded me of that horrible day in Newcastle, UK, when I returned home after hearing I had failed out of the Master's programme and my uni days were over (so I thought, but that is a story for another time). I was devastated, I went home and cried harder and longer than I can remember. I felt like I had let my team down, my supporters down, my organization down and had wasted a year time away from the field. My housemate, Claire, came home and she said, "Come, let's go worship!" How in the world could I possibly think of worship at a time like this? I could barely get on my feet, I was so exhausted and bummed. She grabbed my hand, pulled me up to my feet, we went to the living room and she put on a worship dvd. I sat and just listened, listened to the words flow into me. Then all of a sudden, the words came to my lips and my heart began to feel a salve of peace fill it up. As I began to praise and worship the Lord, my strength began to rise in me until I could fully worship Him and thank Him for who He is in my life and that He is holding me through this. I knew everything was going to be alright.
    My friends, Praising and Worshipping our Lord, our Daddy God, is what calms the storms, or at least strengthens us to a point we can walk through them and come out on the other side.