Watching the Daraja Choir sing, I was captivated by their little faces. Their dark skin glistened as if the stage lights dusted them with glitter. Deep brown eyes shined from the inside, as if that’s where the light came from rather than reflected off of. With each synchronized movement, joy radiated out of every muscle–from the fingers as they swung their arms in time to the music, to their toes stepping out the rhythm. These kids oozed delight in what they were doing. I’ve seen joy before, but it has usually been momentary and unsustainable for long, but these kids had this inexplicable effervescence that kept me spellbound. What was it? And how could I get some of it?

I’ve directed enough musicals with kids to know when they’re performing and when they’re actually enjoying it. The best, of the best, of child performers can appear to enjoy a rehearsal but mostly they’re just really good at acting like they do–their authentic joy comes in a performance. Usually the first performance, occasionally the last, rarely in th the middle of the second week. Believe me a Wednesday night crowd rarely feeds an actors energy.

But even child actors who are there because they have to be, those who don’t enjoy the process or the performance, event they find a moment or two on stage where they enjoy themselves. When it happens, they  can’t hide it. You see it cross their face right after the audience laughs at their joke or when they finally nail that tricky dance step.

None of this was what I was observing in these Kenyan kids. They sang and danced their hearts out as if it was the first time and last time they’d ever do it in front of a live audience. (It was actually their 80th-something performance.) In fact, the audience response didn’t seem to pump up their performance. They were already at a peak energy level and even the crowd’s enthusiasm couldn’t take it any higher.

As I watched Eddy, Kevin, and Moses, the boys who were staying with me, I tried to understand what was happening. We’d only been together for a half a day or so, but I’d already learned a lot about  their personalities and had been a student of their expressions. I thought perhaps by understanding what they were feeling, I could make sense of, or somehow explain the joy I saw onstage.

Eddy was sick so he was mostly quiet and his most frequent expression while he was with us seemed to be the glazed eyes of one who was running a fever and the clenched lips of one whose throat hurt to swallow.

Kevin’s expression at my house varied from a blank slate to a smile that made everyone who saw it involuntarily stretch their own lips in reciprocation.

Moses was the moodiest of the three. His expressions ranged from scrunched up and crying features when he hurt his lip (in a skateboarding accident) to wide-eyed excitement when something intrigued him.

But as I sat in that cushioned chair watching the boys sing and dance I realized that none of these expressions were on their face now. Instead, it was as if their faces were transformed by the very act of singing and dancing. What is going on? I asked myself. Surely they couldn’t have been taught to fake it this well.

Then I remembered the previous night’s dinner. As the boys sat around the table, I tried to make conversation by asking questions.

“Of all the places you’ve performed, which was your favorite?” I asked.

Kevin and Eddy quickly agreed, “BigStuf.”

Of course. BigStuf is an incredible camp for youth held on the beach in some popular Florida destinations–Panama City and Daytona Beach. Jordan had attended for two years and couldn’t wait to return.

“Charlotte,” Moses answered.

“Charlotte?” I asked. I couldn’t possibly imagine what a kid would enjoy about singing in Charlotte.

In his Kenyan accent Moses spoke slowly, clearly articulating each word.  ”I liked it because the pea-pull at the church screamed and clapped.”

“Ohhh,” I said knowingly. “You like it when people scream and clap for you.”

He quickly corrected me, “Not for us. For Gawd.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.  I could feel my cheeks growing hotter. I had assumed it was the attention that he was responding to and I was embarrassed that it hadn’t even crossed my mind  he would like the church’s response for any other reason.

Here’s a kid who lives in a third-world country, who daily experiences a life of poverty that not only will I never experience, I will likely never even comprehend. When he is put on a stage and people respond with enthusiasm for his performance, it doesn’t even occur to him that the accolades may be directed at him. Instead, he interprets it all as a response to worship–their response in his mind could only be directed toward God.

As I focused on Moses on stage his eyes caught mine and he smiled a little bigger as if he knew what I was thinking. And that’s when I understood.

What I was seeing on stage wasn’t a performance, it was an act of worship.

When has a church worship band had the kind of joy and humility in worshipping that these kids did? What would our worship be like if all of us could go where these Kenyans went when they praised God? And when is the last time I worshipped with such joy–using my body, mind, and voice with such abandon that the only thing left on my face was a glittering reflection of God’s light?

As the song ended and I heard the applause around me, I realized that what I had witnessed on the faces of these children was the same thing the people saw on Moses’ face as he came down from the mountain. When you’re in the presence of the Almighty, your face changes and it reflects a joy not found anywhere else on earth. That’s why these kids looked the way they did, they were in the presence of the source of that Joy. They were worshipping with their entire being.

Hearing the applause around me, I wanted to jump up and scream for Moses, for the choir, and especially for the Gawd who had sent them to us. But I was afraid of what people would think.

I didn’t jump up. I stayed seated and politely applauded. And once again, the blood warmed my cheeks–not from the radiance of seeing God–from the shame, because now I knew better and still I did nothing about it.

Have you ever had a chance to worship in a way that was out of your comfort zone? Did you take the opportunity or let it pass you by?

And what would you do the next time that opportunity comes up?

~Jennifer

In my last post in this series, I wrote about how the kids in the Daraja Choir (and their chaperones for that matter) seem to pray from a different place — a place of gratitude. I wrote about how different that was from the place I often pray. I’ve spent some time thinking about why their prayers are so different from mine and I think the answer is pretty simple.

We’re praying to a different God.

My Kenyan friends spend their entire lives being grateful. They are grateful for everything, big, small, seen and unseen. These young men are thankful for the fact that they woke up, that they have fresh air to breathe, clean water to drink, and food to eat. They are thankful for shelter at night.

When they left our house they left a note saying things like, “Thank you so much for taking care of us.” “Thank you for your hospitality and caring for us like your own children.” And the one that gets me every time, “I really do not have a better way to describe what I want to say in words, coz words aren’t good enough to thank you for what you have done and been to us.”

Seriously?

I didn’t do anything for them.

I had hoped to do a lot, but Eddy was sick and so we stayed home instead of doing some of the things we had planned like rock wall climbing. Yet, they were thankful just to have been in our home.

See, my problem is that I am rarely that grateful for anything.  I can’t remember the last time I was thankful for the fact that I woke up, had air to breathe, a bed to sleep in, food to eat, or a place to stay. And the truth is by any standard, I’ve had more of these things and better of these things for longer than any of these young men.

But I’ve also never appreciated them the way they do.

If I am deeply honest, I often see gratitude as a pre-cursor to getting more. “Thank you for the birthday gift!” “Thanks for that compliment.” “Thanks for retweeting me.” My thank-you’s are often thinly disguised manipulations for encores, they’re rarely professions of extreme gratitude.

Perhaps this explains why my prayers seem so shallow compared to my Kenyan friends’ prayers. When they pray they are praying out of gratitude. They were so grateful to God for every little thing they have been given. When they pray, they pray in disbelief that the God who reigns is so good to them.

When I pray to God, I am hoping that more of what I am thankful for will continue to rain down.

My Daraja friends believe in a good God who reigns above everything. I believe in a God who rains down good stuff on me. It’s no wonder my prayer life is so shallow–my God is too.

Lord, help me to see you like my Kenyan friends see you. Help me to know that everything I have from the first breath I breathe in the morning, to the pillow I lay my head on at night and everything in between comes from you. I’ve done nothing to deserve anything I have. It’s only by your grace that I live and breathe. Help me to understand you like my Kenyan friends understand you — as the King who reigns in glory. Forever. Amen.

Who do you say prayers of thanks to? A god who rains down stuff or a God who reigns? And if God is the source of everything, how do you know the difference?

~Jennifer

This is part one in a series on things I learned from my friends in the Daraja Children’s Choir. You can get an overview and links to all posts here.

I’ve written two books on prayer.

I’ve spoken dozens of times on the subject.

I’ve taught Sunday school classes on prayer and been a part of hundreds of conversations on the topic.

In fact, in Six Prayers God Always Answers, my co-author Mark Herringshaw and I spent a lot of time telling people that there isn’t a right way to pray. You don’t have to say certain words, assume a specific posture, or be in a certain place. But I changed my mind about that this past weekend when my new Kenyan friends taught me that the place where prayer comes from is perhaps the most important aspect of praying.

I like to think I’m okay at prayer. I’m not shy to do it out loud in front of people, quietly at home, or in an email for that matter. But this weekend when the Kevin, Eddy, and Moses, twelve and thirteen year old boys from Kenya prayed, I was humbled by their prayers. And when Dan their chaperone (also from Kenya) prayed I was blown away by the depth of faith demonstrated in their prayers.

Unlike most adult Christians I’ve been around who pretend to tie their shoes when the leader asks, “Who wants to pray?” the boys were always eager to pray aloud. There wasn’t anything shy or intimidating about praying for them. They welcomed the opportunity. When they prayed, they spoke in quiet, hushed, reverential voices. They didn’t pray so that the people at the other end of the table could hear them. If I wanted to hear their prayers I had to still my heart and quiet my body because these boys prayed for an audience of one. Yet somehow those quiet words were more jarring than a plane that suddenly loses altitude.

With little accents that pronounced every consonant and every vowel they would pray, “Thank you, Gawd for the oxygen we breathe.”

For oxygen? I can honestly say, I’ve never thanked God for oxygen.

“Thank you Gawd that we are ali-vuh. We know that to be ali-vuh is a geeft from you.”

Being alive is a gift? And I would think to myself, What have these boys seen in their life that makes them wake up every morning thankful to be ali-vuh? I pray for my health, but usually only when I am sick, occasionally when I am feeling really great, but never just because I’m alive. When is the last time you thanked God for the geeft of your life?

As their prayer continued, they thanked God that they had a shelter for the night. Not, “Thanks for this house with beds and an Xbox 360.” For shelter.  They thanked God for the food on the table but not by saying, “Bless this to the nourishment of our bodies” like I and so many Christians do. Instead they humbly prayed, “Thank you, Gawd that we have food to eat.”

The Sunday lunch prayer really caught my attention. In that prayer, they prayed for the hands that had prepared the meal. This phrasing isn’t unique, I’ve heard others use it as a way of thanking Grandma for making the Christmas ham or as a pseudo-blessing on the church volunteers who cooked the Sunday meal. But the boys only used this phrase once and it wasn’t when I had prepared their meal, it was when we ate fast-food from Wendy’s.

As they prayed, an fireworks of conviction popped in my head. When is the last time I prayed for a fast-food worker?

Truth be told, the only time I even acknowledge fast-food employees is when I am complaining about something they did wrong. To take the time to pray for their hands, hands that weren’t even at the table to hear us, is so, uh, well, un-American. When we pray we want the beneficiary of our prayer to know we’re praying for them like we get some kind of spiritual or relational points for acknowledging them before God. Two points if I remember to thank Grandma, three if I remember Grandpa too.

If that’s the way I pray, just how sick am I?

The other meals the boys ate, I prepared myself (and by “myself” I mean prepared frozen food). I am not the world’s best cook, so what I lack in quality, I try to make up in quantity. If I served one type of fruit, I served three types. If there was bread, there were two loaves. The beverage choices were practically unlimited. Somehow, I thought that would make up for my inability to create gourmet meals. But no matter how much food was on the table, the boys ate just enough to meet their physical requirements.

This is important when you know what they prayed after they thanked God that they had food to eat. They would always pray, “And Gawd, please remember our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers back in Kenya. Help them to find enough money today that they might also have food today.”

Are you crying yet?

Because it was about this point in their prayer that my stomach would do flips and my eyes would start to water. I’d dream about packing large crates of food and addressing it to “Moses, Kevin, Dan, and Eddy’s Families.” And anyone else who is hungry.  I know there are starving people in the world, but I didn’t know them until I met their sons.

I wanted to overturn my kitchen table out of anger that I have so much and they have so little. Had I been in their place, I would have been so bitter. Guest me would have lectured host me on waste. I would have begged and guilted host me into sending money to my hungry family and friends at home. I would have turned on “Gawd” asking why he did so much for host me and so little for Kenyan me. But these thoughts never seemed to cross the boys’ minds. They were grateful that they had a meal. And they trusted God that he would provide for those who didn’t.

No blame.

No guilty-finger pointing at those of us who had more.

No, “I’m not going to eat because my family can’t,” show of solidarity. Just acceptance and quiet prayer for those who didn’t have their food they had at this meal.

See, here’s the thing; I don’t even know how to thank God for my food. Because I don’t know what it’s like not to have it.

Sure I’ve fasted for medical or spiritual reasons, but I knew there was an end. And I knew my child was eating. I can’t imagine the horror of not knowing if or when you would eat again, let alone being a Kenyan mother watching her child cry because of the pains in his empty stomach.

Food to me is like oxygen. It’s in abundant supply and I can have whatever I want whenever I want it and I don’t think about it because there’s enough for everyone else in the room too.

In other words, I take it all for granted. My oxygen, my food, and the geeft of my life.

So when it comes to prayer, I am not sure I’ve ever prayed from a place where I was really grateful for what God has given me. Frankly, I’m not sure I’ve ever done more than repeat trite and often used phrases when I prayed. Hearing my new Kenyan friends pray opened up my eyes (and my heart) to the place God wants us to be when we approach him at his throne.

These young men take nothing for granted, not their life, not the oxygen they breathe, nor the food they eat. And when everything is a gift, you thank the giver for it. That’s why these Kenyan friends pray differently than I do.

They pray from a different place than I do — a place of gratitude.

Lesson #1 from the Kenyans:  The place of prayer matters.

Do you recognize yourself in this post? Are you one who prays from gratitude or are you perhaps more like me and pray from a place of entitlement and apathy? Where do you pray from?

~Jennifer

Their tour ends in eight days. If you missed them at Watermarke you’ll have another opportunity to catch them before they leave. They’re doing a live worship CD recording at North Point Community Church on Friday night. I posted the details here.

If you’re planning to come, let me know, I’d love to see you. And I can’t wait to see Dan, Eddy, Moses, and Kevin one more time before they return to Kenya.

Have you ever had to say good-bye to new friends? How hard was it for you?

~Jennifer

I’ll post more details from our weekend later. But I wanted you to know about this because I promise, you don’t want to miss it!

~Jennifer

I hope you’re planning to be at Watermarke Church this Sunday. We’re having the Daraja Children’s Choir from Kenya join us for both the 9:30 and 11:15 services. Check them out on Twitter, Facebook, or their own website and blog.

We’re excited that three boys and their chaperones will be staying us for the weekend. I am leaving to pick them up in just a few minutes. Can’t wait to blog more about it later this weekend!

Have you seen the Daraja Children’s Choir perform?

~Jennifer