This is a posting from a recent blog I follow by the John Wesley Project (http://dentalmethodist.blogspot.com/):
I love this prayer from the Book of Common Prayer for Sundays, as it reminds us what the real purpose of Sunday worship is. The early Church was for the most part Sabbath keepers on Saturday, the last day of the week, and Resurrection celebrators on Sunday, the first day of the week. I think we should be too, as we lose SO much by conflating the two into one day. Here is the prayer.....
O God, you make us glad with the weekly remembrance of the glorious resurrection of your Son our Lord: Give us this day such blessing through our worship of you, that the week to come may be spent in your favor; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I lift this up for three reasons…first, for the most part I think we have idealized the first century Church and forgotten the immense struggles they faced. On top of significant issues like circumcision, and eating food sacrificed to idols, when it became apparent that Christianity and Judaism could not co-exist as a single religion, the Christians had a great struggle with when to worship. Reinforces to me the fact it was a God thing the church ever made it off the ground in the first place.
Secondly, I too think we suffer with our mentality of worshipping only one day a week (and for some for only an hour on that one day)! When I read that I was immediately reminded of Grant Norsworthy’s proclamation that worship is a lifestyle, not a specific time of the week or type of music we sing.
Finally, I love the prayer. Instead of asking God to deliver us from our struggles, we should be praying that God will give us the strength and wisdom to get us thru the struggle. Seems to me the latter prayer aligns much more with God’s will than the former.
No comments:
Post a Comment