lent 7 - not the shadow

Last night I was watching a programme about the school which was situated next to Grenfell Tower at the time of the fire.   Gareth Malone was putting together a choir  of pupils to celebrate their return from a makeshift school of portacabins a few miles away to the original building.  Interviews with lots of the kids and footage of them coming together to write a song about their experiences.  They showed the kids going back into their school for the first time since the fire next door and re-familiarising themselves with it all.  Teachers and adults all trying very hard to cater for all possible emotional reactions.   One girl said

'' They keep talking about the school being in the shadow of Grenfell.   But we're not the shadow.  We're the light.''   

Bam!  What a statement.    And how true.  Those kids who lived through the trauma of losing so many friends and schoolmates and relatives, and watching the neighbourhood grieve and be angry, are the hope for the future of Grenfell.   What I love about Gareth Malone is that he takes his undeniable talent as a musician and a choirmaster and invites the young, the broken, the lonely military wife, the hard pressed medics, anyone and everyone to sing their own song.  Not his song.  He facilitates them singing their OWN song.  And because he believes in them and validates their voice they blossom and grow.

I wonder how many of us are living in the shadow of something that has happened in our lives?   Living in the shadow of a family tragedy or breakdown.  In the shadow of a diagnosis or of pain.   Or maybe living in the shadow of someone who shone so brightly and was so brilliant that we felt we could in no way compete.  Maybe we need two things - to realise that we are not the shadow, we are the light.  And then maybe we need to start singing our own song. 


At Lent we are thinking about all that Jesus did for us as He lived and died on earth to tear the veil between God and man caused by sin and rebellion.  The only shadow we should be living under is the shadow of the cross.  And the song on our lips should be the unique song of freedom which only we can sing.  Heaven will be a glorious symphony of every freedom song being sung in harmony and perfect accord by the millions of the redeemed who know who they are in the light of who He is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ4xkBNRwXc