For a long time I have struggled with the hospital analogy for church. To me, church feels nothing like a hospital. In a hospital I am very sick, so I am really unable to do anything for myself. Nurses are coming in constantly to check on me. Really, in a hospital is the only place where I have ever felt, "it's all about me." You are served every meal in bed. Nurses come in for regular blood draws and blood pressure checks and I never ever felt like I had made progress when I came out, I just didn't feel the same kind of sick anymore. I spend several months afterward trying to overcome the atrophy that has begun to take place. It took a year to feel normal again from my last hospital stay. I just can't use a hospital as an accurate description of what happens at church at all. I never feel like going to church is all about me. I don't have people checking on me over and over again, and no one is bringing me food in bed. Any spiritual food I get I have to work for, sure there are lessons and talks but if I don't do some real work in internalizing the stuff I learn, I don't 'eat' anything.
Perhaps a more accurate analogy is band class. As a kid I was in band. I spent all week practicing the same part. It was frustrating and dull because it was just my part and a lot of times it was the same phrase repeated several times with just slightly different rhythms; I played the flute. This became even more pronounced when listening to my son practice; he plays the baritone. He would have a series of the same note sporadically placed between large measures of rests. That seemed to be a more accurate description of my life. But then comes the day of band class and depending on how well we practiced we put our part with everyone else's and all of a sudden the part starts making sense and practice doesn't seem nearly as dull; since now we can hear the other parts with ours in the back of our heads. My band instructor was always very clear, "in rehearsal play loud." He wanted us to play loud so we could hear the places where we weren't fitting like we should. Then if we couldn't figure out how to fix it on our own, he would gently point out the problem and help us fix it. Then when I went home to practice again, I would have notes written down that would help me to practice better and the next time we had band practice the music would greatly improved. This pattern would repeat itself, every week, until performance day came. Often during my sessions of practice and seemingly endless band classes, I would be thinking, "ugh, this is so much work with not very much return, I'm not going to do band next year!" Then the night of the performance would come. We'd all be dressed in our best clothing and we would start to play. The acoustics would light up the hall with our music, and I'd hear it in a way I hadn't heard it before. The auditorium would be alive with music and it would penetrate my soul in a way nothing else could. Then I would say to myself, "I love band, I'm going to do it next year!" That seems to me to be much like church is to me. I run around like a crazy lady, everyday with my kids and husband. I cook and clean and run errands and every day I feel a little like I did when I was a kid sitting in my room playing the same part of music over and over again. Sometimes this life doesn't make a lot of sense and frankly it doesn't even feel like music, but then I go to church and I hear what it sounds like when we play together, I hear the places where my rhythm is off or I'm out of tune and I start fixing it. I make notes for improvement. Everyone plays a different part and it is in the mixing of the parts that the beauty of the music is really heard and felt. Then when I go home and start practicing my part again I can hear the other parts in the back of my head and it makes my part make more sense. Certainly there are Sundays like band rehearsals when it sounds like no on practiced. Sometimes on Sundays like that it is easy to feel like I did as a kid, "this is ridiculous, we are making very little progress, Why do I even go?" But then those Sundays come when the music is so sweet, it penetrates the heart like nothing else can. I start to see things and hear things I hadn't heard or seen before and it makes the practicing easier and not so dull. I start to see my kids as blooming instrumentalists and even start to take the time to listen for what they are practicing and how, even in it's rudimentary stages it enhances the music our family is playing. Sometimes I get frustrated because it seems like everyone is playing a different piece but when I time to go to church and listen, really listen to the music I start to realize that sometimes our family is practicing different parts of the same piece and it's good, it's good to understand that there is a place where we can go to have sectionals, to work on our parts individually and then come together with a better understanding of what we are playing and how it works with the other parts. Someday our Master will come and the day of performance with the acoustics set just right and the auditorium filled. On that day I hope I have used and am using every practicing opportunity God has given me, to hone my part so that the music of that day can be most sweet. I know on that day all the practice we have given will feel more than worth it!
