Pastor's Weekly Word

 

I grew up going to worship. Every week my family would pile into the car and head to church. It is a practice that I kept up into adulthood right up until I went to seminary and accepted the call of being a pastor. Throughout my life, worship has played a central role in shaping who I am and what my faith looks like.

 

Early on I can easily say that I was not thrilled to attend church on Sunday. In my family, though, not going was not an option. So, even though I wasn’t all that happy, I went. I had to. My mother was bigger than me. As a teenager I began to appreciate worship more, though I didn’t always understand it. Sill, my friends and I would sometimes devise plans for making it look like we were in church, while actually doing something else. In college, I went less frequently, but I still went. I found a local church where one of the pastors was an old family friend who greeted me with a smile when he saw me. When I showed up, being in worship felt a lot like greeting an old friend that you hadn’t seen lately.

 

I’m now officially a middle-aged adult. Life is pulling at me from all ends. To say that I have any measure of control is laughable. Worship now feels like respite to me, something that I not only long for, but desperately need. In worship I am given time away from the crazy polarized unfair world in order to rest firmly and securely in God’s great big hands of love. Worship keeps me sane.

 

Through each stage of my life, worship has served as anchor. It has been there whether I wanted it to be or not. More importantly, though, it continues to be there when I need it the most. May the same be true for you.