Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 0-220

LIFT UP YOUR HEARTS

From ‘Sunrise Sunset’ (HarperCollins/Harper San Francisco), Rowland Croucher’s book of daily meditations. Feel free to use or adapt it.

It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High. Psalm 92:1.

Christian worship services usually begin with a Call to Worship and Invocation. Here nothing excels the ‘Sursum Corda’ for feeling and dignity. The leader says: ‘Lift up your hearts’. Our response: ‘We lift them up unto the Lord’.

Worship is the expression of a love affair between us and our wonderful God. God is not a supreme egoist who needs flattery in order to survive. Wrong ideas about God generate all kinds of evils and heresies. For example if God is thought to be the Author of our social system, this can lead to injustice perpetrated against those who question this assumption. If God is mostly ‘who I need’ our worship can be sickly and subjective.

Authentic worship is always Christ-centred. The early Church remained in the apostles’ teaching because Christ taught his disciples; they had fellowship because they all belonged to the Church, Christ’s body; they celebrated communion because Christ ordained it; they prayed because Christ taught them how to pray.

Lord God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, one God, I worship you in reverence and awe. You are my God. I am your child. I honour you with my words, my praises, my love and my obedience. To you be glory forever and ever. Amen.