I led worship this morning for Paradox, the high school ministry of Grace Church. Not something I do often, but circumstances allowed for me to fill in. They meet off-site from the church, up the street, next to a Domino's pizza.

I should have taken a picture to show you what I saw as I was leaving.

As I got in my car (maybe 30 feet from inside the ministry room), I saw a car parked next to mine. It had 2 decorations on the back of the vehicle.

1. Darwin fish.

2. Bumper sticker reading "Dear God, please save me from your followers."

That sums up Reno.  That car represents not just a sizable group here but truly the majority.  Those in the south have a different set of challenges to be sure, but doing ministry in a place where adults haven't even heard of Jonah and the whale is an exciting and difficult place to be in ministry.

It's weird to think that I have been rather excited for the past few months for the new ESV study Bible to come out. Not because it's weird to be excited about God's word, but weird because not too long ago (10 years), that concept was completely foreign to me.

And so, I have the new ESV and am very excited about it. To channel my excitement into something useful, I am going to make some brief observations on the book of Genesis.

GENESIS

Gen 1:
Always been fascinated by the idea of "night and day" counting as one day, and not "day and night".

Gen 2:
Interesting that Adam is assigned the naming of animals before Eve is introduced. This could be so that the first marital argument would be delayed to a later date.

Gen 3:
God says "don't eat this fruit or you'll die".
Woman says "we can't touch this fruit". (not what God said)
Satan says "you will not die" (a lie) but he ALSO says something true..."you will know good and evil". He loves to mix truth and lies...
Woman saw practical and positive things about the fruit and decided to pursue that instead of obey God's voice.

Gen 4:
9 generations in, we see the first Biblical example of music (with instruments I might add).

Gen 5:
235 years in, people begin to "call upon the name of the Lord". "Worship" occurs hundreds of years before music is mentioned.

Gen 6:
v3:Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years."
What in the world?

Gen 7:
Why aren't the animals in the water killed too?

Gen 8:
Kind of humorous that some of the animals survive the flood in an ark just long enough to then walk off the ark and be sacrificed. Bummer for them.

Gen 9:
Lex talionis applied to animals. Wow.

Gen 10:
Language begins, but soon with disastrous results. Unity in of itself is not a Godly virtue. The question, "to what are we unified?" is key. People can be unified in their rebellion against God...

Gen 11:
v4 Why would they build a tower AND a city? If the plan carried out, they thought they'd have access to heaven...That to me is like buying a plain ticket to Hawaii but booking a hotel in Elko. Maybe to protect the tower?

Gen 12:
v1 From the very beginning of Abrams promise, it is clear that he will have to leave what is familiar; "leave your country", "leave your father's house".

v19 Would love to know how Pharaoh figured out the plagues meant wife and not sister.

Gen 13:
v17 Would you be tempted to walk a little further than you were told?

As I was reading in the Psalms today, it occurred to me one of the many reasons that music and singing as personal worship is really "hit or miss" for a lot of people has to do with comfort.

Not immediate comfort (think the climate controls for driver and passenger in a car). More like, an overall comfort in life where we have no immediate needs.

I should preface this by saying that singing to God is commanded in scripture, and there are no qualifying statements about singing only being performed by people that love music, (like me) or people that are really talented (like others).

It seems that comfort and singing are rarely next to each other in the scriptures. Singing has often through human history been a means of comforting the soul, or at the very least expressing something that you feel. This occurs most often in times of trouble, times of sorrow, and times of elation or joy. These are not neutral places for the soul, but instead a time when a person is most aware of themselves and their Creator.

The problem for many church attenders is that they sit through a church service and feel nothing. The problem for many worship leaders and service planners is that worship is not about emotion and sometimes emotion can even lead us away from true worship.

From the pain of David in the Psalms fleeing from his enemies desperately trying to save his life, to the richness of the old Negro Spirituals, there is undoubtedly a connection between great anguish and powerful, evocative music. Joy and deep peace have been a spring of art as well, but an exciting joy (the birth of the child, a financial windfall, a new relationship) is what leads to song. Not a stripped down, temporary joy, like the joy I feel over my favorite burrito at Qdoba.

I guess my point is this; comfort in many ways removes the human need to respond to anything. At its most basic level, the human soul will seep in apathy and a numbing stillness unless provoked. Grace seems pretty provocative to me.

I pray that we would be a provoked people.

Many in my age group are apathetic and in some cases even hostile towards the local church.  The most common reason?  Church is messy.

It may be oversimplified in my mind. No one questions that the church is made up of people that are broken. Therefore, churches are inherently broken, sometimes in obvious areas and other times in more difficult to perceive ones.

This is a part of what Jesus sees in His bride regularly, and lovingly works through and despite her on a regular basis.

The rub comes in when believers see said brokenness and decide that they will have nothing to do with the local church. Rather than being the catalyst for change that the church may desperately need, they isolate themselves and turn into the church's critic rather than her champion.

I hope that the brokenness of the church at large is a means for us to never take credit for advancement in the Gospel, a humbling presence that allows us to welcome others into our community, and ultimately, something we admit openly to give glory to our Maker for.

We are messy.  We are sick.  That's why we need Jesus so badly.