He said to him, ‘
“You shall love the Lord your God
with
all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
This is the greatest
and first commandment.
Matthew
23: 37-38
When does worship begin?Does it begin on Sunday morning with the call
to worship: that word spoken which ought to be grounded in scripture to give
God the first word?Or with the prelude,
a musician’s offering of thanks and praise?Or in the gathering, both the silent prayers here in the sanctuary or
the heartfelt greetings and the check-ins that happen week in and week out
(“How is Betty feeling today?” the church elder asks.)Or does worship begin even before that?
What if worship is an everyday activity?What if worship begins in the hearts and the
minds of the people of God as they greet each new day?When the routines of our lives, when the
shaking off of the aches and pains, when an early morning reading of scripture,
when the conscious decision to rule out other opportunities for the morning,
when it all comes with the intention of offering praise and adoration to
God.Maybe that’s when worship
begins.For that is God’s Spirit at work
in you.
In our acts of worship, whether prayer or
time spent in the Word, we discover once again who we are in Christ.And such a discovery has a liberating effect
on our hearts.Worship centers us, that
is; in a busy "late for the next appointment" world, worship provides
us with the opportunity to focus our lives on God and thereby see everything
clearly.As C.S. Lewis once said, “I
worship and believe in God as I believe that the sun has risen, not only
because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
It is my prayer for you that this summer you
renew your worship of God by living each moment and each day as an act of
worship that will bring joy to God’s heart.