The World According To Chris Brewer

Here’s something to break out of my case of writer’s block in a big way.

Omar preached a great message at church tonight, about how we need to be the ones to reach out to those lost and hurting in our community, show them the love of Christ, accept them into our church, and see them as God sees them. Great message — it wasn’t hard-hitting, but it was powerful and it was something that brought a new life to the parable Jesus told about the king who held the wedding feast and when no one who was invited came, they brought anyone and everyone from the highways and byways and they all enjoyed it.

So fast forward to home tonight.

Here’s a little insight as to my music collection. I have 5,050 songs on my computer (I just checked so it’s an accurate count), with maybe about 1,300 of them being labeled as Christian, Religious or Gospel.

The reason I told you that, is that out of 5,050 songs and me wanting to listen to whatever random song would pop up, suddenly “The Stand” by Hillsong United started playing.

Junk, I thought. I’m gonna skip to the next song.

For some odd reason though, I felt intent on listening to the lyrics and I remembered this was a song we had sung at church a few weeks ago, and I had really enjoyed it. So I kinda figured I’d sing along and look up the lyrics, which go as follows:

You stood before creation
Eternity within Your hand
You spoke the earth into motion
My soul now to stand

So I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll stand
My soul Lord to You surrendered
All I am is Yours

I sang along with the lyrics and about three minutes in, I closed my eyes and imagined everyone in our church singing it again as we had done a few Sundays ago. I sang the lines I’ll stand with arms high and heart abandoned, and before I knew it I had risen out of my chair and raised my arms high in worship.

This is nuts, I thought. I never do this at home. Only in church.

At Shauna and Nick’s wedding yesterday I told Angie Thomason that I wouldn’t cry during anything, because I’m not a crier. In fact a few of my friends told me once that if I cried once a year it was a miracle.

About four weeks ago I cried at prayer meeting, and sure enough I did it tonight. I replayed the song and I closed my eyes as I imagined me being there while Jesus was being crucified. There was Mary and James standing over off to the left, the soldiers all keeping watch on the right, and me just standing there with the song playing.

As I began to pray after the song was over, I imagined something else. Could we call it a vision at this point, I don’t know. But I imagined that our church was full of people singing I’ll stand with arms high and heart abandoned, and they were all standing on their toes and fully extending their arms as if reaching for something that was just out of reach. Imagine that, Crimson House full of people engaging in such a wonderful act of worship, and it was like Jesus was standing there ready to bless everyone.

Anyway, that happened about 30 minutes ago and I knew I had to post that because it was gonna bless someone, I’m sure.