Hey all.  Thomas Czinder, Minister of Worship here. You'll normally find a pastor blogging here, but I thought I'd sneak one in.

For those of you who attended worship in the Blended service this past weekend, you may have heard interesting music during the offering.

"That sounds familiar...what is Thomas playing?"

For the offering I was playing a great arrangement of the traditional African-American spiritual "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho", newly arranged by Philip Keveren.  It was fun to play, and I hope that it brought joy to your worship. 

But my FAVORITE setting of this spiritual would have to be a choral setting by Moses Hogan.  You can listen to it here. Here we find a battle (Joshua 6) taking place musically within the choir.  We hear the Israelites marching around the city, we hear the trumpets blasts, we hear the Israelites shouting!  What's most impressive is that at the end, we hear the walls of Jericho come crashing down.  You can find the traditional lyrics for this piece here. 

Like many old African-American spirituals, we can see behind the lyrics and find the hope of escape from slavery. We can imagine a people, though oppressed, singing with passion and faith, musically expressing their faith and trust in deliverance from their oppressors.  When we place our trust in a God whose ways are higher than our own, we discover that the victory has already been won in our battles. When we have battles to fight, may we, like Joshua, always see that it is God who gives us the victory!  (see also 1 Corinthians 15:57).