God speaks to me through music. I love it when I hear a song and it causes my soul to listen. There are times that I feel like my heart almost stops…like my very next breath depends on the Truth of the lyrics combined with the rise and fall of the melody.

A.W. Tozer once said, “God does it and man sings it. God speaks and a hymn is the musical echo of His voice.”

Much of my journey back to Christ is because He spoke to me through a song. Maybe it’s because a song doesn’t criticize…it doesn’t judge who I am or where I have been. It just is. I can probably list at least a hundred songs that have really influenced me but rather than start at the beginning of that list, I will start with the most recent.

I have had Chris Tomlin’s Christmas album, Glory in the Highest, for several weeks now and I have listened to it many times. (If you enjoy Christmas music and worship music, this is absolutely the album for you.) Looking back, it seems like every time I started to play it at work, my phone rang or someone walked in my office. It also seems like when I played it in the car, my daughter chose that exact moment to start a conversation on the content of scarecrow stuffing. Don’t get me wrong, I love talking to my daughter but it is difficult to focus on a song when you are trying to explain that, no, scarecrows are not necessarily stuffed with only scary stuff. (Secretly, I am wondering if the scarecrow is stuffed with the federal government’s FY10 budget and spending plan; that’s about the scariest thing I am aware of. Probably not…but I digress.)

So tonight, I didn’t just listen to the Tomlin album…I heard the Tomlin album. Track number 11, “Winter Snow” featuring Audrey Assad, to be specific. My heart paused as if Audrey were singing this to me and only me. This is an amazing, amazing song performed by someone with the most beautiful, bluesy, inspired-by-God voice that I have heard in a long time. I am her newest fan. If you have never heard the song, I invite you to listen to it here. (Just click the title, “Winter Snow.”)

The concept of the song is so simple. Here are some of the words:


I almost feel funny writing anything after those words. Clearly, the song is describes all of the possible ways that Jesus could have appeared to us. He could have been bigger and stronger than any of the biggest or strongest things that we can imagine. But he appeared as a baby. In the middle of the night. To a virgin. In a stable.

That’s not exactly what I would call a grand entrance. But how beautiful is that thought? How peaceful is the middle of a clear night when the stars are as bright as the moon? Doesn’t the thought of that night give you hope? Doesn’t it make you feel as if God hand delivered His Son to us….for us?

Could you imagine if Jesus and His Army of Angels rode into Earth on a thunderbolt and cast fire and lightening at people to prove a point?

Yeah. Me either.

Think about snow. It is hard to think about a lot of snow having grown up in warm North Carolina. But even I can remember the first flake falling, then the second, then a few more and a few more until the grass started turning white and slowly disappearing. The snow slowly taking over the dead, brown grass until it all was a beautiful blanket of white.

One. Piece. At. A. Time.

That’s how Christ did it. Maybe that’s how we should do it.
We all have those friends. The ones who I refer to as the “project friends.” Like a new flower bed, or painting the bathroom walls, we make this friend our next project. Our ultimate goal is introducing her Christ and maybe getting her to join our church. We go in with the gusto! We call her daily; quote scripture when we can; talk about the activities of the church; invite her to church; show her our happiness; bake cakes; add her to the prayer list; counsel her when we disagree with her actions; worry when she never accepts our invitation to church; and on and on.

Whether we realize it or not, we may not be helping our “project friend” as much as we think we are.

Maybe we should approach her “quiet, soft and slow,” like Jesus did and like the song suggests.

Rather than going in with the gusto, maybe we should go in with love. We may not even need to say anything. Sometimes, just being there for someone and listening to her is enough to grab her attention. “Finally!!” she is thinking. “Here is someone who will just listen to me and not judge me.”

I know what she is thinking because I was the “project friend” for a lot of people throughout my life. The ones who truly made an impact on my life were not the ones who came to me with their Christian hat on and their Bible in their hands. The ones who made a difference to me came with the heart of Jesus. The ones who were easy and slow. The ones who just wanted to love me and not judge me.

One day, I will tell these people who they were to me. One or two of them are reading this blog right now.

In the meantime, I will witness to people the way they did and the way Jesus did. I pray that God helps me with this because even now, I am so quick to speak and quick to judge. I want come in quiet and soft and slow. I want to see Jesus cover the dead with His perfect white.