Like a lot of folks I spend my days earning a living….. working pays my bills, but does not define who I am. And rarely do I have an opportunity to step up to what is important on a heavenly realm. I pray often and I hold people in need up to the Father and .. that is important. But it isn’t what I hunger for. I have willing hands to dare more… but what and when and where and how? I am not a gifted Bible scholar, and I am not a teacher of children, and I have more flaws than paper to write them on. I struggle with superficiality and intimacy. And I struggle with allocating my resources (time, money, and energy). What I am trying to say is that life is a struggle.
Sometimes I wish I could live in an ancient monastery of old where there was a comfortable and predictable rhythm to days searching for holiness thru service, and solitude, and silence. No, I live in a place where I make hundreds of decisions every single day about how I use the resources given to me that may take me closer to God or a away from him. Just this week I recognized that my failure to be in the Word, created a distance that made me feel alone. I don’t want to be farther away. I want my meager flawed efforts to seek relationship with the Father to be my offering of gratitude for what He has already done for me. I am not chasing grace. I accept that I am not worthy and will never be.
But then there is worship… which is how we should live our lives. But it is a struggle... Worship is where I come on Sunday morning (and sometimes often-er)…a time for focusing on holiness, not mine, but His. My failures and shortcomings are no longer before me and for the short time we are together….I, this flawed struggling inadequate and pitiful person becomes the person that Christ wants me to be. No part of me counts, except what I am giving to the Lord. And it is not in the offering plate.. but my heart. I don’t care what songs we sing. I don’t care what the subject of the sermon is. I don’t care what they are announcing about the church social calendar and I don’t care about church politics or what leadership is doing or not doing and how many are doing it. I don’t care whether the rest of the day will be spent alone or working or lunching with someone. I am there for those minutes to worship HIM!
My heartaches and disappointments recede as I sit down and turn away from myself and focus on this Great God who is and was and will always be the Perfect IAM. Those minutes in worship are where I truly feel dead to myself and alive in Him. My only regret is how quickly it passes.
That is why I hate to sit while I sing! It is my offering from my heart to God’s. I want to be closer to Him. I want to raise my hands and come to him without holding onto anything in this life. I can’t sing (but my heart sings!) I certainly cannot clap and sing at the same time (I have to choose one or the other!)… But it is me and God surrounded by my sisters and brothers in the Lord and it is a “foretaste of heaven divine”.
Yet, when it is over, I never leave empty as I came, but full to overflowing. I bask in the warm glow of relationships that He has blessed me with. Being together and worshipping together, I leave knowing that I am part of something bigger than me… something I don’t always understand and something I can’t always feel….. something I cannot demand and command.. but being in Sunday worship shows me that when my life is over and done… I can look forward to true and perfect worship of God the Father.
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