Browsing Tag

Worship

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Back-up Singers and Vocal Music

Posted on January 26, 2026

Last night, Glenn and I watched a documentary movie (with our Vidangel) called Twenty Feet from Stardom. It was about back-up singers to the stars—people like Merry Clayton, Judith Hill and Darleen Love and others.  Interviewed were mostly African-American women who had carried a big part of the musical load onstage, and in recording studios, for people like Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, Ray Charles and Sting, and groups like The Eagles and The Rolling Stones. 

So many things about the film were interesting, just because these people whose names are not household words for most of us, actually did the doo-wops and the beautiful, sometimes repetitive harmonies that made songs top out on the charts. Lots of times, the hits would not have landed in the top forty had it not been for the creativity and sheer talent of  those who rarely got a spotlight. 

Mixed in the movie were quotes about singers, like this one from Jazz drummer Bill Maxwell: 

The human voice is the most pure expression coming from your own being. There’s nothing between your soul and your ability and your body, and it’s not being camouflaged by a trumpet or a saxophone or a guitar. It’s pure. And that’s why they’re so sensitive about it. Because, they’re putting it out there.

This morning as we drove to worship God, I mentioned to Glenn that I thought about our a cappella worship when I heard statements like Maxwell made. I said that God, who made our voices and gave us our abilities to harmonize, must have been so keenly aware of the closeness of the soul and the human voice when He prescribed for us the kind of music that is purest and closest to our selves, for  worship to Him. 

Glenn said, “Oh, I thought the same exact thing. My mind took that same journey when I heard those quotes.” 

God doesn’t have to have a reason to prescribe a certain kind of worship. I don’t have to be able to “logic it out” to know that He is sovereign and He is to be obeyed. Since I know that every command for music in worship in my New Testament instructs me to sing and since I know that no musical instruments were used in worship of the church till hundreds of years after it’s establishment, I know that singing is the authorized mode of worship music.

But it is fun when I hear the 21st century secular world articulate truth about the purity of the very kind of music that God authorized in worship.

We don’t have to know why, but sometimes, as we ponder His perfect system of authority in worship, perhaps we do get partial glimpses into the infinitely wise God we serve. 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Superfluous Decor

Posted on May 19, 2025

We did a lot of talking about the Lord’s amazing creation (but we do that at home, too! His “footprints are everywhere.”)  We did a lot of catching (and then returning) creatures in the big pond. There were bi-daily trips to the dollar store, and, altogether, I’d estimate we had 40 showers, collectively, in three days. Glenn shelled and cooked shrimp, fresh from the gulf, for us one day, but, besides that shrimp dinner, I was the cook. That was a task, let me tell you!

On the last night, there were leftover hamburgers, hotdogs, and shrimp. There was steak and taco salad and lots of little bits of sides left over. But there was not enough of any one thing to feed the group. So everyone had to answer a Bible question, in turn, about the sea or fish. (There are lots of those in there). If successful on your turn, you’d get to pick a food for your plate. Shrimp went fast. Kids did not like to miss questions (Grown-ups weren’t crazy about it either!) Eliza Jane told us about Peter walking on “de sea and den he falled in, but Jesus dus pulled him wight back up.”

Last Thursday was Eliza’s birthday. I, personally, thought all decor was superfluous, since we were right there in the beach-themed party decorated by God, himself. But she was insistent that her cake be identical to the unicorn cake that her sister had, so we crammed all the unicorn things into the SUV and went with that. Kids are funny. All that sand, the crashing waves, the gorgeous sunset, a small angler in a pail, that her brother had caught in his net, a crab in a bowl that her sister had caught and brought home in a washed-up shoe, a tiny silverfish that her brother grabbed before it slipped through the holes in his net…All that, right there in the beach themed house, and she wanted to decorate with the mythical rather than the real!

Eliza buried her toys in the sand and promptly forgot where. (Maybe some other child will dig them up and be delighted at the buried treasure.) Colleyanna left a floating note for someone to find, with her contact info included. (I know, probably not a good idea for a variety of reasons; but the quest and the dream was so vivid in the eight-year-old’s little heart.) Ezra was all about rubbing seaweed on my leg under the water and making me think I was being fish-rubbed (or worse…jelly fish attacked!). 

The best thing is always God’s people wherever we go. We walked into a tiny church on Wednesday night and there were the diggers! “Aren’t you Cindy?” they said when we sat down in the back? And they had worn their “tears-in-a bottle” earrings (Month 8-Practically Speaking!) ! I had to get a picture of these diggers! I love the sisterhood! 

Then on Sunday, both morning and night, we were inland as we traveled home. Walking in on Sunday morning, where we thought we knew no one, we hugged old friends, some of whom are going to be with the grandkids at AP camp in a couple of weeks. We shared prayer requests and I gave away all of the frozen food that was left from our trip. Sunday night, we even went to Zaxby’s to eat with folks with whom we worshipped.

God’s people are everywhere and they are amazing. I hope you are not passing up the wonderful fellowship opportunities that can come your way when you worship wherever you are! Most of all, I hope you are not passing up the blessing of worshipping the Father as you travel. It’s not hard to plan and find a group that’s faithfully assembling and giving him praise in song and sermon, observing the strengthening communion with Him, and bowing in prayer. I never know how much I need to worship until I have been with His people. I praise Him for the obvious beauty that emanates from that first creation week. But I praise Him, even more, for the eternal beauty that was at the ready when the garden was marred by sin, a short time later. Being in the family of the redeemed on earth is a taste of the heavenly glory to come!

He IS everywhere and we obviously praise Him in all places, every day. But there is nothing like gathering with His people and lifting our voices to Him as a family! I love the church!

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Worshipping with Mrs. Shirley

Posted on February 12, 2025

Life’s crazy. But I have to take a minute to tell you about Mrs. Shirley Nolen. She’s bedfast now, but her spirit soars. I was privileged forty-plus years ago to be in a traveling singing group with her daughter, Shannon, while we attended Freed Hardeman College. And now, all these decades later, after Shannon has been gone to glory for a long time, I am even more privileged to know Shannon’s mother, Mrs Shirley. I’ve now known her for 22 years. Where does the time go when you love fiercely?!

SO many fond memories of her sweet, giving self, including many hours of time and talent and materials sacrificed in making beautiful (I mean gorgeous…the prettiest I have ever seen) pew markers for Hannah’s wedding years ago. (There were a lot of pews and every one had a bouquet in a linen napkin that Hannah got to keep!)  I cannot even start to tell you what Mrs. Shirley’s done for Hannah’s childrens’ hearts during the last three years. This year, she had their little Christmas presents bought and given to their mom way back in the summer, because she was afraid she wouldn’t be with us, on this side of eternity, when the holiday came. Thankfully, she was blessed with health that kept  improving and she knows they did open and love those gifts on Christmas morning! 

Sunday, I was privileged to go and “assemble” with her for livestream worship, so that her amazing care-givers, the Waddells, could go and worship with the church. To watch Mrs. Shirley, following the losses of her children and her husband, sitting up and intently taking notes from the sermon and then the Bible class…to close my eyes for a minute and listen to her sweet voice singing praises about the Lily of the Valley, who has brought her joy, even through so much pain, was healing to my weary soul. 

Here are the top ten ways (in no certain order) that I was blessed by being in that little bedroom with a near nonagenarian for worship on Sunday: 

  1. To worship is always the honor and blessing of any week!
  2. Mrs. Shirley could not straighten out her body to sit up, without being pretty crooked in that bed. She sat up anyway, and she said “Oh, I’m fine. This doesn’t hurt at all.” I thought about those people I know who complain about the uncomfortable, though padded, seats at whatever buildings in which they worship. They sometimes do this when they, just last night, sat on bleachers at the ball field, in the rain and loved it.
  3. I looked around at her wonderful place to be and marveled. This family, Carey and Lisa Waddell, who have taken her in (and it has been four-ish years at this point) are not physically related to her. They are blood-kin through Christ and they love their spiritual family. She kept saying “I am just so blessed.” 
  4. She had just finished a breakfast that Mr. Carey comes to fix for her every morning. I asked her what he fixes and she said “Whatever I want.” 
  5. She got out her notebook and took meticulous notes during both the sermon and the class.  She had a pink book light clipped to the top of her Bible.
  6. Mrs. Shirley said a bunch of things she was thankful for during the break between the worship and the class. She said “I am most thankful for the sisters who come to worship with me.” 
  7. She is reading her Bible all the way through as she has done many times. “This time,” she said, “I am reading it through with my friend, Peggy Coulter, and we talk each week about what we have found that we didn’t know before and we compare notes. I’m learning a lot.” She’s 87 and she has read the Bible over and over, but she is learning “just so much.” Does that tell you anything about the sword you wield against the devil? 
  8. Over lunch, Mrs. Shirley talked with me about her grandson who is teaching the Bible in Ukraine and about another grandson, who preaches in Missouri and about her sweet Shannon, lost (to us) to cancer years ago, but who has a living legacy.
  9. She talked with fervor, to me about a friend who was once a faithful Christian, but who has walked away from the Lord. “She has to know she can’t be here too much longer. I would be so afraid.” She is not politically correct, but she is so right.
  10. Mrs. Shirley, bedfast and so very limited, remembered with fondness, our dear friend Fannie Phillips, now in glory, who whispered loudly to her after my husband Glenn came to preach at West Huntsville the first time, back in 1984. Mrs. Fannie said “They’ll never hire him. He has red hair.” They didn’t. She was right. But God’s timing is so, so good. Twenty years later, we came back again. This time, they did hire Glenn (It was probably because some of the “red fire” had been tempered and some was gone completely!). We’ve worked with this good church for 22 years. And now his hair is not red at all!  (Mrs. Shirley remarked “You never had to wonder about where you stood with Fannie. Right again, but I sure miss Mrs. Fanny!)

a couple of trick or treatings with Mrs. Shirley…

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Kathleen Ferrell…a Labor of Harmonious Love

Posted on July 16, 2020

Okay! Just let me take a minute today to tell you about my amazing sister-friend out in Stockton, California who can carry not just a tune in her bucket, but lyrics that are scripturally beautiful and harmonies that will make you want to pick your part and go! Kathleen Ferrell wrote a song for a little gift of encouragement for Glenn and me; and there, in my mailbox was the sheet music, with original scoring and access to the youtube spot to hear it. I want you to be able to hear it, too, along with all of her beautiful contributions to our worship praise in the church. 

The best part about her work is that it is truly a labor of love. She offers all of her songs to the church for our free use and reproduction for books or powerpoint hymnals. 

Kathleen’s done a lot of musical work, as I understand it, since the Covid-19 virus has plagued our country. Thus, she cannot assemble the required parts to record the songs, so that we can hear what they sound like with all four parts. However, she sings them for us on youtube and then she synthesizes voices (without words) so we can hear the harmonies that will be added, when we sing them congregationally, to the lead to which she has introduced us. (Hope that makes sense. You’ll see. We all understand the humming and ooh-ing and ahh-ing is not what we will do in worship, but the synthesized harmony does allow us to see the beauty of the piece and how it will sound when all the voices are blending.)

You can find her music (and subscribe) here:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbe5qy5ZztRGETeiKT7NsXA. The channel is Pure Joyful Music by Kathleen Russell Ferrell. I’m so thankful for her work and fully expect it to bless the kingdom for years to come. Here’s the sheet music for “our song,” too. I love this song. Only God can put this kind of talent in His creatures. Only God can give us something so magnificent to sing about!

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Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Digging Deep Israel: Next Stop–Jeroboam’s Altar at Dan

Posted on January 15, 2020

Viewing the actual site of the unearthed and reconstructed high place of Jeroboam was one of the ironically low and high points of the trip.  I was amazed that I was viewing here the ruins/reconstruction of the physical result of this amazing declaration by Jeroboam:

It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. (1 Kings 12:28)

Rebellious Jeroboam, first king of Israel following the division of 1 Kings, the one who led the rebellion against Rehoboam was clearly paving, for the 10 tribes of Israel, the path to laziness, ease, idolatry and ultimate ruin. He built two gold calves and set up an altar on this hill in Dan and called the people whom God had rescued over and over again, to worship the images in this very place. I wonder how/if Jeroboam would have altered the course if he could have peered through the lens of time and seen this mound of ruin where God’s followers still today lament over the bold departure from the Will of the Sovereign One. I wonder if he would have changed his mind about moving the “mound” of worship to Dan, if he could have known that people 3000 years hence would be reading over 20 passages in the Old Testament in which Jeroboam was described as the sinful one who led Israel into idolatry. I wonder if he would have placed the altar for idol worship in Dan if he had known that the tribe of Dan would be omitted from the genealogies of 1 Chronicles or from the listing of the 144,000 in Revelation 7.

To us today, the altar at Dan shouts an ultimatum: Reverence or ruin.

For those in our religious world today who think it unimportant to work (yes, work) to make our worship pleasing to its Sovereign audience, the altar of Jeroboam stands as a sentinel warning. Worship which disintegrates to an arena of human fulfillment, rather than obeisance (literally, worship means crouching before the high one) to the Infinite One, the path is destruction and omission from eternal blessings.

In practical terms, may we be  diligent to put the “work” aspect of our worship in the hearts of our children and at the center of our homes. We do this by preparing for it, praying about it in terms our kids can understand, laying aside our generous contributions ahead of time (and our children’s), making all efforts to be there on time and to be fully engaged, and making sure there is no laughter and visiting with friends during worship. It’s figuratively keeping our worship in Jerusalem and always refraining from “high places” of our own devising.

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

And Prior to the Lesson this Morning…

Posted on December 9, 2019

I was up at 6 a.m. this morning—a  Sunday morning—and I asked my husband if he’d be okay studying for his lesson upstairs while I watched an episode of something (volume up) and ran on the treadmill in the basement. He said “Oh yeah…It won’t bother me. I’m just going to be preaching up here. Go ahead.”  That’s his usual mode on Sunday mornings. He likes to pace and whisper-preach his well-prepared lesson one last time. He never uses notes in the pulpit and that last run-though is vital to his memory. 

But despite the loud volume on my television and the humming treadmill motor, I could hear bumping and knocking, stamping footsteps and things falling in the upstairs part of the house. It did not sound at all like study or the kind of whisper-preaching that my husband does on early Sunday mornings.  If he was preaching up there, it must have  been some more  powerful sermon. Just as I was working up a sweat, Glenn came down the stairs, rounded the corner and with a look of utter agitation on his face, he shouted “Can you  power that down and come help me?…Can you come right now?”

“What’s wrong?…”What’s the matter?” I said as I started shutting off the treadmill and the TV.

“Well, we have a small squirrel in the house and I can’t catch him. I’ve tried and tried, but he’s very fast and He keeps going under things and behind things and I need you to help me corner him. I’m in a pickle. I have got to get back to this lesson.” 

“Oh no…Oh dear…okay,” I stammered. “…but I am really not your girl for this job.” See, Glenn wanted me to stand at the end of tables and sofas and beds to try and corner the squirrel when he emerged from hiding places. What I wanted to do was stand on top of those tables and beds and sofas and stay as far from that squirrel as I possibly could get. I soon saw, though, that our squirrel had no qualms whatsoever about running on top of tables, himself, and jumping from stairwells to tabletops to floors and behind armoires and under closed doors. He was the next thing to a flying squirrel and he was all over my house. And he loved stairwells.

The next few minutes proved to be a worthless workout. Out of breath, Glenn kept saying “I’m going to have to let you take care of this because I have to preach in a few minutes.”

“I’m not the right person for this job. I just can’t do this, “ I kept responding.

“Be brave. I need you. The church needs you. Just watch for him to come out and call me.”

About that time, we both thought we heard the little fugitive in a closet—a closet jam packed with 150 glass-bottle Coca-Colas, and a dozen packages of paper-ware for a big Christmas party we’re planning for the congregation at the end of the week. In addition there are a bajillion gift bags in there along with piles of random packing and wrapping materials and bows. There’s a shelf of 32 volumes of the “Great Books” and there’s a library that I use for Digging Deep. There are clothes I’ve hoarded for grandchildren and all of my winter coats. There are extra bed pillows and there’s an electric train. In short there are a million places for a squirrel to hide in that closet and there’s great potential for squirrel havoc in there and I am NOT the girl to go rummaging through that looking for a jumpy squirrel! I would jump out of my skin if I ever actually found him in there! My imagination went quickly to him jumping from the top shelf onto my back as  I’m jostling those boxes and bags on the floor. Or what if I came eyeball to eyeball with him when I looked behind that basket of toys?!  Intellectually, I know he’s small and he wants out of my house as badly as I want him out; but this is no academic exercise. This is Cindy Colley in a closet with a squirrel who’s already proven his gymnastic prowess. I’m not your girl.  

So I shut that closet door. I pushed a very heavy chest against that closet door. I went to another closet and got a big black board that I use to cover the kitchen sink when I need more counter space for serving company and I wedged it up against the door, between the chest and the crack at the bottom of the door. I was thinking about all the donations I was making to this project (after all, who wants to set the dishes for guests on a “squirrel trap”?) But I was not thinking too long and hard  about that. I was thinking “I am NOT your girl, whether you have to preach or not.”

I went to the door of the room and shut it, stuffing a quilt under the crack at the bottom. The door kept popping open under pressure, so I rigged a bungee cord up to another doorknob in the adjoining hall. My house was starting to look like a scene in “Home Alone” and I knew that home…alone was exactly what that squirrel was going to be while we went to worship. Home (my home)…Alone (with my Christmas gifts and party supplies and my precious little library)! I could not bear that thought. I am not your girl. 

“What if he escaped from the closet while I was gone to get the board? What if he is not incarcerated, but instead he’s ‘at large’ again in my house? What if he’s in there parading around my Christmas tree where he was when Glenn first spotted him while pacing and preaching  in the living room? What if he is IN my 13-foot Christmas tree? Will I find a mess of broken ornaments on the floor when I get home from worship? Will I pull back the covers on our bed and find pieces of that tree…or worse? What if we don’t find him today? How far back does the front seat recline in my car and is it going to be a warm night?” I went back and rigged another door with a quilt and bungee cord. Some things are just more important than…say, washing your hair or even showering before leaving for worship. 

As we traveled to worship, Ezra and Colleyanna, (ages five and three, respectively) called for FaceTime. Hearing about that squirrel was the best thing about their morning. “INSIDE your house?!!” they yelled with glee. “Under your Christmas tree?!”…”I wish dat squuyell was at my house! Dat would be esciting!”

I tried hard to worship. I really did…and that lesson about Mary and Martha zoomed right over to my pew and zeroed right into my “careful and troubled about many things” heart and I repented for the squirrel-induced hindrances over and over.   

Pulling out of the parking lot, Glenn said “Where do you want to go for lunch?” 

“I just want to go home and find that squirrel.” I replied….”In fact, I’d really love to cook lunch for you while you do the dispatch work.” 

“Seriously?…Well, alright then. We’ll go home.” 

And my good husband drove home, got his little 22 pistol, loaded it with rat shot, and made a regular invasion of that closet. In fact, that entire room looks like it was in the direct path of a level five tropical cyclone.  

A few minutes later, Glenn came through the kitchen with a John Wayne kind of swagger and said “Well, we got him.” 

“Great!… Where was he? I didn’t hear the gun.”

“It was pretty easy, actually,” Glenn replied. “I was just about to give up finding him in that closet. I walked through the bathroom with my gun to look for him in the sewing room…” (That was another room I’d bungee-corded off).  

“…And out of the corner of my eye, I spotted him…floating around in the toilet.” 

Ten take-aways from the thirsty squirrel saga:

  1. Biblical, marital submission trumps fear and is a strong catalyst for creativity.  
  2. When you say “I do…for better or worse” at the altar, you never know what you’re really signing up for.    
  3. Some mornings, just living life burns more calories than running on a treadmill  (or even doing a high intensity training workout).
  4. Always keep a few spare bungee cords around the house. They’re good for lots of things.
  5. Worship is hard work. Some days it’s very hard work.
  6. That Mary and Martha lesson is very practical and unrelenting in its varied applications (https://westhuntsville.org/sermons/mary-martha-and-lazarus/).  
  7. Lots of sacrifices will be made when the thirsty have hope of a drink.  
  8. Make your husband a hero even if he never pulls the trigger. It’s all in the chase; the effort and the end result. 
  9. Sometimes you plunge in too deeply for something you want and you find there’s no way back out.
  10. Not every Sunday baptism ends with walking in newness of life.