There is a preconception in our culture that to be a person of faith means to live a small, tight, narrow life, but that has not been my experience. Far from it. In truth, the deeper I go, the freer I get, until all there is are the gifts God has given me and the desire at the core of my being to use them as He intended. This means some days I’m writing or creating liturgies or sitting on various Boards of Directors with big stickie pads and really smart, faithful people. Other days I’m coming alongside young people to inspire and empower them, or cleaning out old boxes and patterns to help a dying church come back to life, or consulting with seminary profs about what people need to know to mature in their faith. More and more lately, I’m standing in front of large groups speaking about how we’re crushing our young people by raising them to look good on paper, or about sin as “man turned in on himself” and connecting those dots to our 21st-century ills of anxiety, depression, disordered relation to technology, loss of purpose, and loss of identity. Usually as the Word moves through me I weep.
The gift of tears is not one I would have asked for but it seems to be one God likes to use. Maybe this is why I wanted to share this clip—so you could see the fruit of those tears and the great joy and creativity and power and purpose and, yes, playfulness there is in a life of following Jesus. Grateful to my husband for capturing this on his phone. As you watch me kick off this Labor of Love Concert, maybe allow a new thought to break through: what if allowing God into your life was actually the most liberating and empowering thing you could ever do?
Heather Choate Davis 