I sat and I worked upon a worship service. I spent some time upon the service and once it was near completion and in writing before me I came to realize something. The service was a prayer. As I thought about this and reflected, I think I came to realize, that that is what worship should be, a lived prayer, which reflects life which should also be a lived prayer.
In my undergrad days I was a member the RCLP/CCLP program at Graceland University and as part of that program I was part of a small group known as Covenant Discipleship Group, which was similar but different to the groups of the same name started about the time I left Graceland. I can remember sitting in one of our meetings and talking about things, and I don’t recall what it was we were discussing, but I remember stating I tried to live and be in prayer always. I wish that was true today. I am often in prayer but I doubt it is the 24/7 that I seemed to express in words that day. It is something I hope one day to be able to see and realize once again, where my life as being is an expression of prayer, it may be at this point, and I think it is, but I don’t always notice, don’t always think of it that way. And I think the same is true with worship.
How many people go to a Sunday service and just don’t think about what they are doing, but just go to go sometimes with a hope that they will get something out of it, or perhaps offer something that will touch another, but often just because that is what they do and always have done. How many people have just placed together a service without prayer and reflection? I hope not many,, but I am sure it does transpire.
For a worship service starts with prayer. A prayer asking for the Eternals guidance in preparing that service. As I work upon it I reflect and I pray, and seek for that peace and harmony. I also seek to find ways to draw people into the service. Thus occasionally including statements regarding what it is we as a people are doing in each of the four main worship segments of the Community of Christ Ordo. It was reflecting on these statements that I saw how the service itself was a prayer. The language I used was language address primarily from the congregation to the Eternal, these statements were a prayer, the prayers, hymns, readings… are the lived expressing of that prayer. I think, and I hope that if we could come to see worship as prayer, life as prayer, that perhaps we could engage ourselves more deeply into the worship experience, could delve more deeply into a life of true discipleship and compassion for one another, and then truly become Community of Christ and see more clearly the wonders of creation and move toward that day of healing, that day of the peaceable kingdom, aye even Zion. Letting Zion be lived more fully today, and the world transformed to that whole, healed, and restored creation the Eternal calls it to be.
Perhaps, perhaps not, but I think worship is vital. It is the lived expression of who we are, what we believe, it is time for divine encounter, time to call us into service, to rededicate us, and to form us into new creation that truly strives to heal the world.
So what are your thoughts?
Peace be with you,
— Lyle II