Worship


Spiritualpractice 33
Worship, at its best, is a dangerous activity! As Annie Dillard once said, we ought to wear crash helmets and seat belts as we enter the pews! Worship is not about meeting our needs; it is primarily about acknowledging God as transcendent and primary. Worship is about knowing, feeling, experiencing the resurrected Christ in the midst of the gathered community. Really! We have not worshiped until the Spirit touches our spirit. We desperately need to know who God is; we need to read about humanity’s experience of God’s self-disclosure; we need to meditate on God’s attributes; we need to gaze upon what we understand of God through the work, life and teachings of Jesus. This is all no small matter! Thus, worship must have priority in our lives. The Great Commandment places worship before service: Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind and will all your strength. We prepare for worship by daily practising the Presence of God. The more we are able to see God’s presence in our daily life, the more we will experience God at Sunday worship. We prepare for worship by intentionally living as if we truly were the “Body of Christ” gathered. We are gathered in such a way that we transcend our individualism, our personal needs; we remember this way that our life is not about us, but about something far greater than us. Worship involves our whole being, not just our minds – our senses, our feelings, our body too!