sheri carlstrom...slices of an ordinary life

Sunday Morning

 
 I wrote about Sunday, you can read it here.

A Holy Moment

This morning, while worshiping in church, there was a holy moment that captured me. Today was summer camp kick-off at our church and the youth worship band was leading worship. I love when this happens, youth who are leaders anywhere in the church excite me.

My fifteen year old son leads kindergarten and first graders every other month in Sunday school; I love that little kids get to see a teen boy leading. It is quite possible his presence will inspire one of these little ones someday. The other thing that excites me is that as our kids become active members, the potential for their faith, community and connection grows. Hopefully this also creates more positive experiences so that as they go off to college or move away, they know the one place to get involved right away is a local church.

But, back to what happened this morning. My two daughters were on vocals and as we worshiped God through the song "How Great is Our God", I opened my eyes at a  moment when both the girls had their hands in the air and eyes closed, singing straight into the heart of God.

It was a holy moment. As a parent I could feel myself step back. This was a place that I pray about. This is the place I can let go. This is the place where I know its all OK.

There are moments and places where I want to walk as closely with my kids as I can, places where sometimes I am afraid, times when I don't think I can let go. But when I saw my girls move into the surrender of worship, I backed up, I teared up, I let go. As a parent, my deepest longing for my children is that they will develop a strong and enduring relationship with God. If they walk within the boundaries, love, mercy and forgiveness of God, I know the letting go (which begins to happen as they grow closer and closer to leaving this nest of ours) will be easier.

When they were very little, they raised their little hands to me and I picked them up with love. Watching them raise their hands to their heavenly Father, well...I am assured He will pick them up with a greater love than even I.

Stick with Jesus and Stand for God

Hey. It's Sheri's youngest daughter, Erin. I'm borrowing my mom's blog for a minute. I'm in a ministry at my church called Stick with Jesus. In this ministry, we use dowel rods (sticks) to perform to different songs. One of the songs we perform is called "Arise My Love" by New Song.

We performed "Arise My Love" and another song at a small church a couple of weeks ago. We got through the first song, "Voice of Truth" by Casting Crowns, fine and with little mistakes. We were starting "Arise My Love" and my heart was pounding, because I had a solo at the beginning of the song. I got through my solo and had a lot of fun with it, and I made no mistakes.

We were then about to perform my favorite part of the song, which is also the most powerful part of the song. I wasn't expecting a reaction. We hadn't had a reaction from the other two churches. To tell you the truth, I wasn't even thinking about a reaction, I was just thinking about when I had to turn, so I wasn't late. The lyrics to the part where I turned were The grave could not hold the King! As soon as those lyrics were sung, one lady, in a chuch of no more than sixty, started smiling and clapping. Another person joined her, then a few more, and before we knew it, the whole church was clapping for the power of God.

At the end of the song, everyone was standing and clapping! It was one of those moments where you can't help but smile. It was really powerful and amazing.

It took one person that God moved, to move 60 others. I'm sure there were others that wanted to clap, but didn't have the courage. So what are you waiting for? Are you going to be like the lady, who acts when God calls, or are you going to be someone who waits for someone else to start, so you don't stand out for God?

To see the performance we did at my church click here. (Its really cool)