A thought for worship
Worship PreparationIf My Father wills it, I hope to post on Saturday afternoons specifically for this purpose: to offer to you a little something to help prepare your minds for worship on Sunday.
I hope that we have the chance to learn together how we may worship God more fully, as we discuss and share our many perspectives at other times on this blog. But for today, I just offer this bit of scripture as a catalyst, as a small flame that might help you to enter worship tomorrow with a renewed passion, a refreshed spirit, a deeper hunger.
My challenge to you is to put a new picture of Jesus in your mind. Try not to picture him as the meek, peaceful, mild-mannered man petting a lamb with a dopey, brainless smile plastered on his face, as some artists have drawn him. Don’t picture him as the emaciated, bloody man with all of his ribs threatening to burst through his skin as he suffocates on the cross.
Picture him as the huge, muscular, powerful former-carpenter who easily threw the money-changers’ full, heavy tables across the temple with one hand. A man whose strength, authority, and rage was such that no one dared to stop him as he did so. Picture him as the man who taught with a booming voice, with such a commanding presence and authority that a whole hillside of people could hear every word and no Pharisee dared to stop him.
No, better yet, picture him as Ezekiel describes him:
Over their heads was what looked like a throne, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell facedown.
(Ezekiel 1)
That is the Jesus before whom I will be falling, facedown, as I worship tomorrow.
“Oh worship the King, all glorious above…”
