Rehearsal

A song in church today had the phrase “as we rehearse redemption’s story.”

A rehearsal is not the real thing. It is practice for the real thing. Everyone is still learning their lines and marks. The director has to keep jumping in and telling the actors where there supposed to be or how they are to be feeling as they say their lines. In one of those plays we all did as kids, my director told us, usually when we started complaining, that we did rehearsal so we could get all of our mistakes out before the performance that really mattered, the one for our parents.

In many ways, that is life here on earth. We are practicing for heaven. We flub our lines; we miss our marks, but by God’s grace and direction we do it again and we better glorify Him. And that is ok, because this is rehearsal.

But not just any rehearsal. This is a rehearsal for the end, for the throne, for the Day of the Lord. When rehearsal is over, we will be before the Lord our Maker and Saviour. We will be perfect but only because He will have made us so. The redemption we now work out with fear and trembling will have been made complete, and the song of praise that wells up within my soul will be sung with a clarity that gives Him and only Him praise.

Now that is not quite true. I do and trust myself. I speak and my heart is proud. I sing and I do not hear the words. I live and I seek foolish things. And so I rehearse. The Director reminds me of Who it is I sing about. He chastises my motivation for what I do and say and think. He strips away my pretentious costume of self-sufficiency and bids me come. He tells me to sing again.

So again, I do...speak...live...sing less of I and more of Christ who lives within me. Why? Because I eagerly anticipate with faith and hope the Day when rehearsal will be over and I will join the choir of redeemed saints to sing before the Lord.

Rehearse well this week: "Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer." Rom. 12:12