Small fear, but fear conquored. For now.

The girls that have been the core of our praise and worship team are heading back to Canada soon. They'd been asking for somebody to step forward.

We got a keyboard player, a Korean fellow called Poet. But no native English speakers, nobody who knows the music or who could do the co-ordination and lead the congregation came forward. So, with my widow's mite I stepped up.

I've been really struggling with this. The whole music thing is very sensitive to me. And the girls just have no appreciation of how difficult it is for me. There they are, three beautiful, talented young women fresh out of studying music at university, and who do we have following them? A frumpy middle-aged woman who was in chorus in high school, a quarter of a century ago. Yikes!

I've found the prospect very scary. I'd been praying for somebody else to show up, somebody else to volunteer. But nobody's coming forward.

And the thought that kept going through my head is, "I'm nobody's first choice." Well, evidently I am Somebody's first choice, since nobody else is stepping to the plate, and I can assume that God can muster somebody when He wants somebody. Not that that keeps me from feeling like I'll come across like The Fat Lady in the painting in the Harry Potter movies. So I was praying about it, and finally went to the Bible and prayed some more and said, "Show me what I'm supposed to be doing here. This scares me. Am I really supposed to be doing this?"

I opened up the Bible at random and got Psalm 68: 24-27a:

Your procession has come into view, O God, the procession of my God and King into the sanctuary.
In front are the singers, after them the musicians, with them are the maidens playing tambourines.
Praise God in the great congegation; praise the Lord in the assemly of Israel.
There is the little tribe of Benjamin, leading them....

I'm taking that to be a "go ahead and make music." I can be "the little tribe of Benjamin", something small, something not particularly impressive, and still lead the procession, so to speak.

Then I glanced to the next page and saw Psalm 69: 19a and 20b:

You know how I am scorned, disgraced and shamed; .... I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none.

'Nuf said. I understand that and don't need to elaborate.

Then further on, Psalm 69:30-31:

I will praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving.
This will please the Lord more than an ox, more than a bull with its horns and hoofs.

Personally, I can't see my music being much of an offering. God wanted an unblemished firstborn, not the leftovers. But the fear certainly can be offered up.

Well, I got through yesterday. I joined in the rehearsal, and got through the praise and worship, and Trish told me I did great. Even though I had to fudge through a couple of sections where I coudn't come close to managing the chords that fast.

Victory is victory. I'm gonna rejoice in it. Nobody but God knows how scary that was for me and how much it took for me to do it.