Joining the Chorus

Silence is like a two-sided coin; one is soothing solace that heals and comforts, while the other side is where one feels invisible, silenced, and the pain goes deep.

Abba wants to talk with His children and loves to have those children converse. Running conversations that sometimes have no end of questions, sometimes it is the conversation that has no end and it unravels as life unfolds.

Growing up silence was a punishment and there is still a wrestling to work through the shifting and change in this thinking. Speaking out as a woman was not easy in a denomination where women are silenced.

I sit listening to Brahms’s concertos tonight and enjoying the “Inn of Still Water” as I call my home (The soul is healed beside that still water). Little lights around the window, votive candles casting dancing shadows on the brass above the fireplace and Sebastian the cat sleeps on the back of the big chair. It is not lost to me that in this Season Abba is teaching me more of celebration. Perhaps for the first time I am embracing this Christmas to celebrate the birth of Yeshua, the Giver of Life and the One who speaks to my soul calling me to speak and celebrate having a voice.

This Christmas is about celebrating and using my voice in music. There are two services to go to on Christmas Eve and both will have plenty of music to join in with. At an open house event this week there will be plenty of music – and one can join in with that. What has struck me as very amusing though is that in redeeming the silence, and the pain of that silence, God has once again showed His sense of humour! Not only to sing in the Messiah and sing with full voice but it includes singing a whole chorus of the most expressive word for praise – Hallelujah! Moving the heart from the agony of silence to the praise of Hallelujah is one of the most glorious celebratory cries this voice can articulate.

This Season is about birthing, about redeeming, about voice and about the celebration that comes from the pain to bring all those about. Yeshua knows it because He lived it. Yeshua walks it with us through the yesterday, today and into tomorrow. Hallelujah.