Finding Worship
Psalm 122:1 “I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
The other day I got dressed up in a suit and tie to film some Easter Sunday videos and when I walked downstairs my kids took one look at me and yelled with excitement and confusion, “Wait…are we going to church today!?!” I smirked at their realization that the only time they see me look this way was on our way to worship at church, but I also resonated with their shared anticipation and excitement, is today a ‘church day’?
The past few days I have been in a COVID-19 blues. As we enter into Holy Week the weight of what I’m missing has fully come down on me. I miss Sunday mornings! I miss the nervous/adrenaline feeling I get in my stomach every Sunday morning as I prepare for our weekly gathering at New Life West Lakeview. I miss the moment where I enter our church and find our worship team setting up their instruments and greeting me in their sleep-filled eyes. I miss the greeting time of handshaking and hugs that come after we sing worship songs. I miss the breaking of the communion bread and seeing lines of people coming forward to receive. I miss worship!
So I come to Psalm 122 and I’m greeting with this gentle reminder of this feeling of anticipation: “I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!”
The Psalm of Ascents are about anticipating the moment of worship, of entering the temple, of being where the Lord’s presence is found. These verses give us that moment right before these pilgrims, these worshippers on the road to worship, are allowed to enter the temple. It’s this moment of excitement and impatience, ‘come on open the gates.’ That within a moment the time has come, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Worship is the moment, the gathering of people, who have come with anticipation, with exhaustion, with discouragement, and are all coming and looking for a reminder! Worship is the venue where we stop staring at our lives through a perspective of control and instead we begin to open our eyes to see the world of God’s presence carrying us, sustaining us, providing for us!
Eugene Peterson writes it this way, “Worship is an act which develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God which is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep essential need to be in relationship with God is nurtured.”
Here is our current reality though, for the foreseeable future, our weekly gatherings of worship are going to look different, and that’s ok! On Sunday mornings as we gather in our living room with our kids and ‘tune in’ to our local worship service at New Life West Lakeview, we stand and we sing the words that come on the screen, we pray the prayers, we hear God’s word, and we still share in communion. Though it feels different, though our kids barely make it through the first song, though it’s hard to be present when you are telling your son to stop messing with his sister, it’s still worship!
Worship isn’t about the place, it’s about the discovery of God’s presence breaking into your everyday life! It’s an appreciation of what God is doing in the mundane, the waiting, the still moments of today!
Psalm 122:3–4 “Jerusalem — built as a city that is bound firmly together, to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord.”
What is worship? It’s moments in your life, in your year, in your week, in your day, where you give thanks to the name of the Lord! Though you may also be missing that weekly gathered expression that occurs on Sunday mornings, find worship in new ways!
I’ve found my worship coming in the new appreciation of the small moments. I’ve worshipped God in thanksgiving when I see my two boys no longer pushing one another but laughing together! I’ve worshipped God in singing praise when I see the sunrise emerging over the horizon, sending bright light over the trees and skyscrapers. I’ve worshipped God in prayerful petition when a friend pops into my mind. I’ve worshipped God in familial life, as we cook eggs and Rich Mullins sings over our household:
“So if I stand let me stand on the promise
That you will pull me through
And if I can’t, let me fall on the grace
That first brought me to You”
Eugene Peterson remarks, “Worship initiates an extended, daily participation in peace and security so that we share in our daily rounds what God initiates and continues in Jesus Christ.”
So on this Tuesday of Holy Week I invite you to discover a new way to worship. A way that extends into a daily participation of God’s presence in your life. Hear the words of invitation spoken over you, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
