My grandson came to visit this past weekend (along with his parents). He’s 23 months old today. We have been fortunate to see him fairly frequently over his short life, and watching him develop had become one of my joys. He happens to be a very large child with advanced motor skills, so that has been fun. He can play catch with some success, and he spent a while this visit running around chasing balls and yelling “Kick” with each kick. However, as someone who has studied human language development and worked on making machines try to “understand” human languages, what intrigues me the most is his developing language skills.

His language has been particularly interesting to observe because it hasn’t followed the expected pattern very clearly. He has had a great tendency to come up with surprising vocabulary that he’ll use very infrequently. And he’s been coming up with the occasional full sentence for a few months. However, most of his speech is still repetition of fairly typical favorite words like ball, Mama, Daddy, kitty, shoe, side (outside), etc. On this visit, he had a new word: James. That happens to be his father’s name, so every use was immediately followed by his mother saying, “That’s Daddy to you.” Note that he was still using Daddy, but was using James when he was upset with his father or was calling him from a distance. As you might guess, those are the times when he hears his mother calling James: when she’s calling James to come or when she’s irritated with him for some reason.

Watching this scenario play out, I was grateful for the perspective that said it’s going to be okay because the child is not going to keep this up forever, and, of course, I felt sorry for my daughter-in-law, who was clearly frustrated and perhaps a little embarrassed. I also found myself reminded of a time when James was a few months older than my grandson is now. I was taking a human language development class for my Ph.D. and had to do a project where I analyzed the language of a child who was between 18 months and 3 years old. Since I had a handy 2-year-old in my house, I did the project with him. As I was transcribing a session, I noticed that James had used the phrase “I don’t think so” in a really weird way in a situation where he clearly just meant “No.” That led me to realize that I used “I don’t think so” a lot with my sons in order to avoid just telling them “No.” Of course, James had figured out that I meant no whether I actually said it or not, so he had decided that the phrase just meant no and used it that way.

While adults tend not to be so humorous in their imitation, we all do have traits that echo others we are close to, be it parents, siblings, mentors, or friends. I find myself occasionally recognizing a turn of phrase or a gesture as being clearly learned from a parent or a close friend. Some of those I’m glad of; some I’m less enamored with. There are times when my imitation is deliberate, as when I adopt teaching practices of other teachers I admire. There are other times when my imitation is unconscious and comes as a complete surprise when I notice it. The key point is that imitation is a thing. We are all imitated, and we all imitate.

If we are imitated, what a responsibility that is. I’ve always be amazed at Paul’s bravery when he twice tells the Corinthians “Be imitators of me” (I Cor 4:16b; 11:1a ESV). What danger to put yourself out there as a model for other Christians. And yet, Paul is not alone in that role. We all walk in a world with eyes on us, both of fellow believers and of non-believers. How do we live with that reality?

The key is in the remainder of I Corinthians 11:1, where Paul says, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” Elsewhere, Paul commands us to “Be imitators of God, as beloved children” (Eph 5:1 ESV). So how do we do that? I think the key is in that phrase “as beloved children.” My son imitated me because he spent time with me and listened to me. My grandson is imitating his mother because of the time spent with her and the close relationship there. We can, and should, consciously imitate God, but we will become most like him when we spend the time and energy on that relationship that allows us to begin to imitate unconsciously, simply because we hear and see and God is doing and we automatically do the same.

Despite the increased acceptance of “choruses” and “contemporary Christian music” in a variety of evangelical churches, I still see and hear laments about the loss of hymnals, complaints about the volume of that new-fangled music, and concerns about all these young people who grow up without knowing the traditional hymns and songs of their denomination. Now, as someone who loves to belt the alto in a 4-part rendition of “I’ll Fly Away” and had at least the first verse and usually more of a significant percentage of the Baptist Hymnal memorized by the time I was an adult, I’m certainly not going to argue that there is no value in those music traditions. However, I think that we older Christians too often dismiss the value of learning and singing new songs of worship.

The Bible tells us to sing to the Lord a “new song” 5 times: Psalm 33:3, Psalm 96: 1, Psalm 98:1, Psalm 149:1, and Isaiah 42:10. Besides these injunctions, there are other references in both the Psalms and Revelation to worshipers singing a new song of praise. So that leads me to two responses. One is to seek to be open to new songs of praise, even if they’re not my style of music. The other is to seek to understand why. Why would God want us to sing new songs to Him, and not just the old familiar songs we have?

The first reason, I think, is for the creators. Those who have been inspired to create still often benefit from encouragement, so these verses serve as that encouragement. They affirm that need to compose and point out that there is value in new worship music.

However, I believe that these verses are not just for composers, but also have meaning for all of us. When I sing songs that are extremely familiar, I sometimes (maybe often) discover that I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing. My mouth and lungs are engaged along with a subconscious portion of my brain, but the primary part of me is not there. When the music or the words are not so familiar, I have no choice but to think about what I’m singing, and thinking about what I’m singing is what makes it worship.

Another factor, I believe, is that God is very aware that language and culture change over time. Music that means a lot to one generation may not mean so much to another. Even though I realized recently that I can still sing every word of “The Solid Rock” from memory, I’ve discovered that singing “On Christ the solid rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand” means more to me when it is part of the driving bridge of “The Rock Won’t Move” than it ever has in the old hymn I’ve sung for 45 or so years. I believe that’s because I am a child of the 70’s and 80’s when it comes to music and that driving beat reaches my heart in a way that the melody and rhythms of that old hymn fail to do. In recent years, I’ve found myself crying during worship, largely due to some major family issues, but in a way that is responding to the assurances of the words of songs like “God Is Able” or “I Will Look Up.” I can’t imagine having the same reaction to any but one or two of the traditional hymns.

To anyone not convinced that new music is valuable as culture and language change, I’m inclined to ask when they last sang a motet at church.

The value of new music that is culturally relevant and uses current language is greater for new Christians or those who are not Christians  yet, but are willing to visit a church. English has changed in the past 200 or so years, and some of those traditional hymns use words or phraseology that are meaningless to those who didn’t grow up in church (and even to some who did). Accessible, authentic worship is attractive and helps new Christians learn to worship.

As a missionary kid, it occurs to me as I think about these issues that it is incumbent upon anyone who is ministering cross culturally to encourage the creation of new worship music by the new Christians rather than just translating their own songs to the new language. Even as we seek to communicate in someone’s heart language, we should encourage people to worship using music that touches their hearts, even if it’s not the music that touches ours.

A final piece of advice to any worship leaders who might read this: if the song has been done at least three times in recent months and people aren’t really singing, either the music is too loud or the song is a poor choice for congregational singing or both. These things can be fixed.

I’ve missed posting the last two weeks for two very different reasons. Last week, my husband and I were enjoying our first real vacation of more than a long weekend with just the two of us in 32 years (since our honeymoon). Since we were on a cruise and I hadn’t had a chance to write something in advance, nothing got written or posted. The previous week, I was at my last grandparent’s memorial service and then traveling home from that.

This week I want to do some reflecting inspired by the experience of losing my grandmother. However, I’m not going to focus on the grief itself or the comfort that Christ offers. While I love 1 Thessalonians 4:13 and other verses that give me confidence that this woman who firmly believed in God is no longer suffering and that I will see her again, I want to pursue a different thought path.

This most recent loss was of my favorite grandparent growing up. She was young to be my grandmother and treated me and my sister in many ways like a (very slightly) more permissive version of our mother. She was also someone I wanted to be like. She was a teacher, and I wanted to be one. She played piano and sang, and I loved to do those things. She became my first role model.

She and my granddad were a major part of our lives. Before we went overseas, we spent a fair bit of time with that set of grandparents. They visited Indonesia during our first term. We sort of lived with them on our first furlough (we had a house in the city, but spent the majority of nights at our grandparents’ house in the country). During college, I generally stayed with them on vacation. I have many, many positive memories of visits of their homes: the cat, the dogs, the horses, the Barbie doll suitcase full of dolls and lovely hand-made clothes for them, the playhouse they built at the first Tijeras house, the piano and organ and the hours we spent around them singing in small and large family groups, the many sounds the organ could be used to make back in the days before digital keyboards, the weird phones (Granddad worked for Mountain Bell), the many friends they welcomed to their home, singing in the choir at their church and working in VBS there. Then, of course, there are the interesting memories like mud coming out of the shower head or trying to water the horses when the hose was frozen or chasing the pig who refused to stay in the back of the pickup. My mother sitting on the pig was the best part of that last one. In many ways, my grandparents supplied a kind of home that couldn’t come from a life of moving once a year on average and that more fixed home had love in it that rivaled the love in the home that moved all the time.

And my grandparents stayed important in my early marriage. My parents were in the States for the birth of my first child, but not for my second, so my grandparents came. When my oldest was hospitalized with pneumonia and other issues before he turned three, my grandparents dropped everything and came to help sit with him and help care for the infant.

However, sometime in my later twenties I discovered that my first role model had clay feet in some ways. First, I discovered that I had some theological disagreements with her, which led me to look more to other role models. But then she said a couple of things that really hurt me. One was a criticism that may or may not have been true, but that I took offense at. The second was to tell me that I was to blame, at least in part, for arguably the worst thing that ever happened to me, something that happened when I was child. It took me a long time to forgive her for those words and even longer to reach a point where I really believed the words weren’t true so that I could move forward in my healing.

After that, our relationship was never quite the same, even after I moved past my hurt and anger. The grandmother I had idolized was no longer someone I wanted to be. That was hard and some of it was bad, but part of it was right, because I use the word “idolize” deliberately. The reality is that my grandmother wasn’t perfect. My parents aren’t perfect. My pastor isn’t perfect. None of my other earthly role models are perfect. And the role models from the Bible were equally flawed. John the Baptist doubted that Jesus was really the One who was to come. Elijah whined about being all alone. Moses got frustrated and hit the rock. Peter showed his flaws off left, right, and center. And David, well, there was that incident with Bathsheba. I could go on at length.

A good thing about recognizing the flaws of those around us and the reality that we are all flawed is that it becomes easier for us to see past flaws we’ve accepted in order to see the good in people. I got hung up on my grandmother’s flaws because I didn’t expect them and didn’t really accept them at first. I couldn’t deal with the idea that she was telling me something that was wrong and deeply hurtful. Until I came to accept that she could be wrong in her thinking, I couldn’t see past that flaw to all of the good things about her that I’d known all my life. I think that’s a lot like the reaction of someone who puts a pastor or other visible Christian on a pedestal and walks away from the church and even away from God when he discovers the pastor in some act of sin. When we recognize the flawed nature of all humans, we are better able to see past the sin to the good and to the God behind the good. And, really, whenever we get hung up on the flaws of another human, we’re looking in the wrong place, because the only person without flaws is Jesus and that needs to be our only focus.

However, as I reflected on my grandmother’s life and my relationship with her, there’s one really cool thing that I realized about her flaws: they’re gone. Salvation is often described as having three parts: justification, sanctification, and glorification. Justification is the salvation all believers have when they accept Christ, often described as “just as if I’d never sinned.” Sanctification is that often slow and painful process of becoming more like Christ while here on earth. Glorification is what we get after this life, when we become completely free of the remnants of our sin nature and participate fully in our eternal life with God. And that’s now where my grandmother is. And that’s exciting and encourages me all the more to look back and see all of the good that God was developing in her during the 91 years on earth and to look past the flaws that are no more.