Rest Awhile

This was the theme for our Sunday service on 19th July. We based our "3rd Sunday Praise" worship on the lectionary gospel passage Mark 6: 30-34 & 53-56. Jesus was seeking an opportunity to get away from it all for a while and his attempt met with limited success. We considered how the opportunity just to stop and reflect, to pray or meditate gives us a refreshing opportunity to sit back from the busy-ness of life and re-connect with God.
Just being still is something which some of us find difficult and in our planning meeting, we were led to propose a game of "sleeping lions" - something which some of the congregation found easier to enter into than others! In an "out of the box" moment, this led us on to the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" which has appeared in various guises in the music charts over the years, but has recently been popularised once again by the Disney film and stage show of "The Lion King". Adam provided an excellent set of words which allowed us to use it as a worship song which reflected on the words of the gospel reading - complete with the Wimoweh refrain!
We suddenly wondered what this word meant (should we have been singing it in church?!) But I'm relieved to report that it is simply a mishearing of the original song's chorus of 'uyimbube' which means "you're a lion" in Zulu. Sandra hoped for inclusion of this YouTube classic, pictured above, which I couldn't get organised, but maybe watching it from here would suffice?
A sleeping lion or not, we took part in an act of worship with a slightly different flavour which I hope encouraged us all to rest awhile.