by Kirk Spencer
My neighbor is deaf and she is one of the sweetest people I know. Ive known her now for almost thirty years. She has lived her life in absolute silence. And I have seen her face other hardships with her particular crooked smile and nodding of acceptance. Ive learned, when speaking, to always face her and exaggerate the movement of my mouth. In her perpetual silence, she is forced to read lips. And she is very good at it.
I was speaking with her the other day (she reads lips very well) and she told me about her choir. At first I thought she was talking about a signing choir not a singing choir. But she convinced me it was in fact a singing deaf choir. In other words a group of people who cannot hear anything at all, using their voices to sing to the Lordvoices that they themselves cannot hear. It is an odd, yet powerful, form of thanks giving. To sing a praise into absolute silence, not in any way for ourselves, but only for the One to whom we sing. The only thing that would make it even more powerfully odd, would be a deaf choir singing to a deaf audience and the deaf audience joining inall and only for the Lord they are praising.
What if all our worship was such? What if all our life was thus?