echo

When I set up this blog, I had all sorts of ideas about what my first major post would be about. I never thought it’d be about this though.

Someone once said that when you pray, more “coincidences” seem to happen. Now, there’s a danger to putting it like this, because you might end up treating prayer as a sort of good-luck charm, which it obviously is not. There’s also the risk of confirmation bias, i.e., you remember the coincidence vs. you don’t remember when there is no coincidence.

I’ve led worship maybe 5-6 times now, and for about 4 of them I had a serious bit of prayer time about what songs I should lead, what theme I should go with, etc. For these services that I did pray about, people gave more positive feedback about the service, either that it really touched them, or that they simply really enjoyed it. This time, however, it was even better.

I wasn’t rostered to lead this coming week, and I only decided to fill in on Monday. With our practices on Monday night, I had the afternoon at most to come up with ideas and songs. I mumbled a prayer to God and sat down at my piano (I usually get more inspiration when I’m playing random stuff). I didn’t know the sermon topic yet, because, well, it’s only Monday. So I could only build a coherent set of songs, but couldn’t explicitly link it into the overall message of the service. That would have to be done later.

One of the songs I eventually settled on was Joe Pringle’s Send Down Your Love, which is a song that has never been led in our Sunday services, but was led in the previous Living Room. If you know me, you know that I really dislike leading songs new to the congregation, because frankly I suck at doing it. But I decided that it fit well with my theme, and that I should give it a go.

The first line of the song goes like this:

You are my fortress
You’re my shield and sword
My hope in Your strength Lord

It’s not the most common lyrics, but not anything special either.

This morning, I got an email from the pastor who’s preaching this Sunday about the sermon topic (“The Lord is My Deliverer”) and bible passage - Psalm 18:1-3 (NLT):

I love you, LORD;
  you are my strength.

The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my savior;
  my God is my rock, in whom I find protection.
He is my shield, the power that saves me,
  and my place of safety.

 I called on the LORD, who is worthy of praise,
  and he saved me from my enemies.

Coincidence?