More From Susan E. Brooks

It’s been quite a few years since we were in Mozambique. We were young parents then, certain we were called to go spread the gospel in Mozambique. Now we’re grandparents, thankful to be in Kentucky within an hour’s drive of all of our children.

Much has changed, and I have more questions than answers now. I’m thankful we went overseas as a family, not because we did so much for the Mozambicans, but because we learned so much from them and it changed us all forever.

I’m now a working artist, sometimes drawing from the images of our time in Mozambique for my artwork. My family has grown to include my three adult children, their spouses, and 10 grandchildren. I now enjoy community theatre and leading worship for our small church.

In my devotional for The Upper Room, I wrote about how worship lifted my spirits and comforted me. And though I have questions about worship, I still find great comfort in singing and leading in worship. I’m not always certain whether it’s the Spirit of God that makes me feel so much better or simply the beauty of the music that lifts my spirit. Is it the act of singing, belting out loud to the heavens in a way I don’t normally do in daily life, that makes me feel so much better, or is it God moving among us? Maybe it’s both. Maybe God’s okay with our uncertainty, and the Spirit dwells in us, in music, in our joy, and in our physical sensations in ways we’ll never fully grasp. It’s all a gift from God, so why do I feel a need to justify, clarify, quantify, divide, or categorize?

I apologize if my questions seem disrespectful or sacrilegious. At this stage in my life, I believe God can handle all of my questions. I don’t think the Spirit is too concerned about getting credit for our ecstasy. I think God made music and our voices and harmony and all of the aspects of worship that make it so beautiful. Perhaps it’s less important to explain what’s happening when we worship than it is to enter in with joyful hearts, letting go of our anxieties about whether we’re doing it right with all the correct theology.

I feel that I am certain about less and less as I grow older, but this one thing I’ve grown more certain about: God is love. If we celebrate God’s love as we worship, then perhaps we can be free to let go and enter into worship as God’s loved children—perhaps full of mischief and sin—but so loved.