It’s amazing when God takes the pieces and puts them together into a beautiful picture, a holy offering to His name.  Our church got to experience that this morning.

Our principal piano player – on vacation.  Our back up piano player – gone.  Our back up back up piano player: me, who has never played piano for a worship service in her life.  Our principal guitar player –  gone.  Our second guitar player – here, having only played with our group once.  Our bass player – here, but with laryngitis (which he contracted on Thursday, forcing us to call in a back up vocal who had never sung with us before ).  Our cello player – here.  There’s absolutely nothing that could go wrong with this picture, nothing at all.

Add on top of that the fact that the internet at church was down, the powerpoint for the sermon was not working correctly – there was a lot that went wrong.  Before the service, one of the elders prayed for us all, that all of the things that the devil had put in our path this morning would be banished, and that He would fill this church this morning.  And He did.  He took the imperfect pieces and allowed our church to worship Him in spirit and in truth.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was nervous for this morning – I’ve never played piano for church before, but there was really no other choice.  And so, I agreed to do it.  I practiced all week, but I was still nervous for how it was going to go.  And so I asked a few trusted friends to pray for me.  Oddly enough, this morning’s message was about prayer as a weapon.  Ironic, really.  The prayers of my friends were powerful and effective.  So is the grace of the people in my church.  So many of them were kind enough to speak to me, encourage me today.  I am beyond grateful, and have been so blessed by all of you.  Thank you.