A Worship Song

As I walked into my room tonight, seeing untouched and unopened schoolbooks lying on my bed, I began to realize my situation in life. I just do not do homework.

I always feel like I am wasting time, time better spent doing something else. Usually I feel that that something else is homework, but it’s not. Far from it.

Being pulled out of school, and being homeschooled, I learnt that God is more important that anything else, and that nothing is more valuable than your call.

I looked around and uselessly threw my schoolbooks onto my floor. After doing so, I turned around and realized that Dad had put a washing basket into my room with the name “Joshua” scrawled on it in permanent marker. Mum and Dad always were on my back about my room, I could never keep myself concentrated for long enough to sort any stuff out, so it would accumulate on my floor.

I ain’t happy, I’m feeling glad

I got sunshine, in a bag

I’m useless, but not for long

the future, is coming on.

I began to realize that becoming a musician is no way to become wealthy, or raise a family, or own a home, or pay bills. I began to realize that in the end, even for the most famous musos end up with unfulfilled lives. Especially the most famous.

I walked to my bed. And stopped. What was I doing with my future? I rubbed my hand on my face. I needed to pray.

I stopped everything, and waited. As it says in scripture to do, “be still and know that I am God”. That is what prayer is, listening. I said nothing.

I looked at the wall. I have various posters and A4 print-outs blu-tacked above my bed. One is a drawing my cousin had done and coloured. It is a picture of a guy with headphones on, screaming. His nose is bleeding. In the background streams rainbows lines indicating sound and noise. That is what music is isn’t it? People can write it and sing it, but tunes are shallow and words sung can mean anything. It all becomes empty and dry soon.

I looked to the adjacent wall. A to-do list that I wrote up as an attempt to keep me organized. I was meant to tick one box daily. If you looks closely, you may find that I have managed to tick one single box. I had stuck that list up at the start of the holidays. Below that is a student-at-risk form from my English teacher. Written on the 29th of April, it states that “the work below has not been handed in to date and is now due immediately”.

Beside the poster my cousin drew, is a song.

When the music fades, all is stripped away

And I simply come

Longing just to bring, something that’s of worth

That will bless your heart.

I closed my eyes and heard these words: “Do you hear the call?”. The words reverberated in my head. And I stood there for a while, listening. And I heard it.

It was a while before I allowed my eyes to open. It dawned on me that I could never become anything studious. I have tried that. No matter how much I want it, it is not what I am wired for. I must launch myself fully into that which I love. I cannot be half hearted about it anymore, because there are a lot of people out there trying to do the things I love. I must lock myself onto my one dream. I can try to please everybody by getting my homework in on time as the best it can be. I can try to study until my head bleeds, but I will be wasting time. All that will be is a compromise. I live in this world for one purpose, to worship God. I should not spend so much time faffing around with anything else. I will never be an accountant, or a lawyer, or a mathematician.

God once told me, while I was stressing about how little homework I had managed to do, “Josh, don’t worry about it. I did not create you to do homework.”. I had never head anything more true. I am a worshiper. I am the voice in the wilderness crying, “prepare the way of the Lord!”

On my wall, next to my to-do list is this:

1 John 3:2-3 (NKJV)

Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.