We Worship

The singers stand ready on the stage, hearts warmly postured toward praise, their inward worship is stirred and spilling before a sound is made. 

The strings announce the sound and the drum leads this beautiful company forward. Their voices each rise like a plume of pure and golden breath, lifting like incense to Jesus; Savior.

We worship.

Voices tuned up, tuned in and tight-- spark a flame. As the song ascends, one bright and rising plume leans into the other and intertwines, one voice now clinging to the other, both disappearing into one fresh sound.  The next reaches and vines around them; like rivers converging into one.

We worship.

The horn breaks in, making declarations! Announcing freedom, proclaiming the kingdom come! We lift our eyes higher, our hearts beat together and we hone our gaze deeper into this place of reverence and awe.  

We worship.

A diverse gathering has joined the song; they feel the familiar ease of dear friends and exhale their cares into the bosom of family.

We worship.

May they be one as you and I are one.  John 17

The Town Bird

One day I suddenly came to town and slept under a town sky, under a shingled town roof, and beneath a white chenille bedspread I bought in the town.  When I woke, the sound of the rooster was far off in the country and I couldn't hear him and his rousing reverence to the rising sun.  The luscious red cardinal perched in the oak tree beside the worn country porch was singing without my daily delight in him. The mockingbirds and blue jays, the crows and the doves were charging the air and the nuthatch was still making his funny sound like a rubber duck smashed under foot, but without me to laugh at him.

It seemed to me the town boasted only the sounds of men and women moving mindlessly about in cars, passing me by under the white chenille bedspread, and the church bells kept telling us all its time to move on.  But where was the morning song?  Where was the chickadee wearing his tidy black cap and sounding so sweet like the high-low squeak of an old teeter-totter in need of oiling? And who was going to call up the sun when not a rooster was allowed under this strange town sky?   And so my heart was grieved for the country birds because I didn't hear their familiar, soul-feeding song that assured me that this world in the country was the most beautiful world of all.

Spring quickly turned to summer who yawned slowly into a broadening autumn and nothing much had changed.  I walked in the town yard behind the house where I slept and noted the squirrels jumping from tree to tree. One ambitious fellow carried a discarded apple high into the sugar berry tree and losing his grip, dropped it, landing with a thud just in front of me.   I walked along the city sidewalks, passing the shop that sold cigarettes and tobacco, sometimes stopping on the bridge to watch the fish swim in the creek below, and always slowing to regard the antique roses that hung pink and rosy in the yard of the 1st Baptist church.  Somewhere in my moving about I began to pause at the sound of the church bells tolling out the hour and I began to feel grateful and reposed.

And then one morning, waking under the town roof, under the dark and sleepy town sky,  I heard a sound I hadn't noticed before.  It came from the the south, from the river's edge and broke open my town life with the same sweetness of the country bird's song that once called up the joy of each brand new day.  For just like the birds, the sound rang out from the depths of Truth, Wisdom and from the sure Hope for the future.

  And within the new sound I heard these words:

"Here is the new sound.  Hear the sound for a new season and a new time. Can you not perceive it?"  

And under the town sky a heart now stirs at the sound of the train whistle calling from the river's edge and assuring that my world is the most beautiful of all still.

And surely I am with you always...... Matthew 28:20

Come Home With Me

Come home with me you stout little man with your little brown turban and tiny pointed chin. 

Remind me of mornings draped round with autumn once again.

Come sit now on the windowsill. In the small room you can recount your times in sun, wind, and wild spring rain; of seasons here and gone. I will listen to you and imagine the things you say, the sights you've seen. I will open the window just behind my eyes and see whatever you say.  Give me your visions, show me vignettes of powerful progeny, of mighty oaks and of humble fallen seeds. 

What a firm voice from a such a wee seed.  And such towering tales you tell! 

I passed a respectable grove of oaks in early spring.  Emerald leaves painted deep with dew shimmered in morning light and made the oak forest seem enchanted. Catkins dangled playfully in the breeze from many branches like a gang of little-boy-legs hanging lazily off a dock in summertime. Are they dreaming and bragging of becoming an oak tree too someday; a righteous towering oak?  

Mother Oak and Father Oak have followed me all my days.  Mother, holding the ropes that carried me high on a homemade swing long ago, Father standing firm with his lavish breadth of shade beside my bedroom windows last year.  And just yesterday, standing along the path offering acorns at my feet.  When they whisper, I am comforted and intrigued. When they shout, I laugh and cry and am undone.

So, stay with me little acorn. Stay fall and winter too on the windowsill here in my room. I will listen to you and in the springtime, set you back along the path.