Tuesday, February 23, 2010

explicit

the other day as i was updating my ipod, i was going through and choosing which songs to put in which playlists and i noticed something rather ridiculous...in my itunes, the song 'Here I am to Worship' has the word 'explicit' next to it in red letters! my first reaction was..."HA!  that's funny!".  but after i thought about it, it occurred to me that it's not so silly. here's why:
i think we can all agree that the word 'explicit' initially brings to mind negative connotations.  when i hear it associated with a movie or a music video or a song, you can bet i'm going to steer clear.  and yet the prominent meaning of the word is not negative at all.  it means: specific, accurate, clear, obvious, fully and clearly expressed.  hmmm, how many of us live 'explicit' lives for Jesus?
so if i were to think of the word 'explicit' being associated with the song 'here i am to worship', i would think: how can i live a life of explicit worship to the Lord?  what can i do to show, clearly and obviously, whose i am?
brian and i were in a restaurant on one of our recent trips and we were unfortunately seated next to a table full of very loud young men.  these guys were not just amiable, good-natured, boisterous loud. they were raunchy, rude, cussing loud.  out of all the (empty) tables in the entire place, we were seated there, next to them.  once the profanity began, brian wanted to be reseated elsewhere, but i thought, since they were there before us, perhaps they'd finish soon.  and being in an unfamiliar city, quite frankly, i wasn't sure that they (the guys at the table) wouldn't be offended by our moving and perhaps make an issue of it...you never know what people are capable of...and i was more concerned with our safety than what i was going to have to hear. (brian was kind enough to give in to my request...he wanted to handle it differently:)  )  after several long minutes of putting up with the blatant disregard for everyone else in the restaurant, brian and i started talking a little louder.  we were talking about church stuff, family stuff, music stuff.... and we started wondering what it would be like to start blatantly worshipping!  what kind of a reaction do you think we'd have gotten had we really given those guys a run for their money in the commotion department!  singing at the top of our lungs, worshipping our Savior, calling out the in the name of the LORD!!  they didn't seem to mind that we were offended by their speech, would they have been equally offended by ours?  could we have been as explicit in our worship as they were in their profanity?
food for thought.

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