The truth is, we can worry our way through the night or we can worship our way through the night. One way is exhausting, the other is restorative. When it’s your turn to stand as a watchman, how will you wait?
Tag: worship
More than a decade ago, I had gone to the grocery store with my mom picking up a few things. It was the week between Christmas and New Year’s and she was on the hunt for pumpernickel bread and pickled herring. I must have blanched when she flagged down an employee and made her request because once she found her wares, she turned to me and indicted: “Don’t you eat picked herring and pumpernickel on New Year’s? It’s good luck.”
Falling in love with Jesus has been the most transformative endeavor of my life: more than learning to read or write or setting foot in another country or even getting married. Loving Jesus has sent me on a journey of healing and wholeness and love for others that could not have happened by any other means.
Worship is always right in the face of resurrection, but it’s not always our reaction.
Someone told me on Tuesday how the word ‘priority’ has been singular for hundreds of years. By it’s very meaning, a priority could only be one thing, but in the last few decades, we’ve pluralized it and in the same swoop of the pen: diluted it. Loving God cannot be one of our priorities: no, He must be the priority.
I smile over the thought of the God of the universe enjoying an #eveningwalk with His kids.
Today I need a fresh revelation of the goodness of the Lord right here on earth.
We see it so clearly in the Lazarus story: Jesus is the difference between life and death. It’s extra dramatic in the Lazarus account, but it isn’t any less true in our personal stories. Before Jesus comes on our scene, we are lost and dying in sin. After our encounter with Jesus, we are rescued and alive for eternity. The question is, what are we to do with this new life we’ve been given?
I believe God gives us emotional high points: lush, well-watered seasons and mountaintop moments to sustain us through the tough days, too. Such experiences can provide enough emotional and spiritual fuel to push through the dry and quiet times, if we’ll only develop the discipline of going back for refreshment.
Huge, beautiful brick buildings with exquisite stained glass stand empty: decaying carcasses cast aside by a faithless people.