Of train wrecks and rescues

Well, it happened yesterday.  Every worship leader’s worst fear.  The nightmare that wakes you up at three in the morning, sweating and shaking in your bed.  The kind of thing that makes you worry for your job.  The kind of thing that makes you forget to take notes when the preacher is speaking.

I’m speaking, of course, of the worship service train wreck.  The worship service where the legendary Murphy sticks his ugly little head out of his hole and says, “just when you think it can’t get any worse, here I come!”  You know, “when everything that can go wrong does go wrong.”  When the drummer is late to the stage and the piano player plays in the wrong key for half of the closing song and the worship leader (that’s me) can’t carry the tune in a refrigerator box, let alone a bucket.  It was bad.  Legendarily bad.  Bad in its entirety.

I’ve beat myself up about this for the last 26 hours.  David Crowder is singing in my headphones, “God of the heavens, take my breath away,” and  I’m thinking to myself that I think yesterday morning we probably took His breath away.  And not in a good way, if you know what I mean.

My preacher is a good and gracious man, and reminded me this morning of what the GM of the Detroit Red Wings told his coach last night on the flight home after they were beaten 8-0.  He said, “Coach, don’t show the team the video of this game.  This was an aberration.  It’s not who we are, really.  We’re going to make it like this never happened, cuz this wasn’t us out there tonight.”

That’s what I feel like – like we weren’t out there yesterday morning.  Our team was there, but they weren’t there, if you know what I mean.  It was a day to take the video and toss it in the trash.  Make it like it never happened.

There’s actually whole days, and even weeks, when I sure would like to toss the video away.  Make it like it never happened.  You know what I mean?  When everything that could possibly go wrong has indeed gone wrong, and I’ve been a part of it, unfortunately.  Right in the thick of it, actually.

God must be like the Red Wings’ GM, I think.  He says, “you know what Nate – that was an ugly day.  It was not good.  You know it, and I know it.  But you know what?  It really wasn’t you out there today.  That was an aberration.  That wasn’t who you really are.  Let’s just take the tape of that one and pitch it, what do you say?”

Psalm 103:12 – As far as east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”   Without train wrecks, would there ever be a need for rescues?