By Lydia Will
It’s Sunday morning and the lobby is full. Everyone is catching up with this friend or that, grabbing a cup of coffee, picking up kids from Sunday school. In the sanctuary, the chancel crew is finishing up getting everything ready for the next service. In the corner, the worship team wraps up the last bit of practice and gathers together to pray. People begin filtering in, finding their seats as the pre-service tracks play. It has all the makings of a new beginning. The beginning of Sunday worship.
But Sunday worship begins long before Jeff gives that nod that starts the whole thing rolling. It begins before Thursday night practice, before the songs are even chosen to complement the message the pastor prepares. Worship begins in a small way, in a quiet place in the hearts of every one of us. From the people running sound to the ushers in the back, worship is a daily practice, a discipleship imperative. Worship is as complex as the hearts of the humans it inhabits. Sunday morning worship can be a great and glorious thing, drawing us all together, united before our Creator – but it finds its roots deep within every one of us. His Spirit working in and on our hearts.
I don’t remember when I began singing on the Worship Team, but I know I was a young teenager when I first found myself staring petrified past a microphone at a sanctuary full of people. Petrified because who am I to be here, leading this? Who am I to assume this responsibility? It’s been quite a few years and some of those nerves never wear off, but my perspective has changed quite a bit. This notion that we need to bring anything to worship but our broken selves has long gone, replaced with nothing but gratitude that He invites us just as we are. That each and every one of us has a role here. A place. The miracle of faith is that He uses ordinary people with ordinary lives to accomplish the extraordinary. I feel it every week when I walk into church and it’s just like coming home.
In that way, Sunday morning worship is a touchstone, a point in our week where we bring together our unique selves and meld our worship together. A culmination of a week spent worshiping on our own, in our way. For me, raising a house full of kids and running a home. For someone else, working a 9-5 and being the hands and feet of Jesus out in the world. Serving and working and praying and living. Living life as a celebration of all He has done for us. Becoming love because we are beloved – that’s worship.
When a people who live lives of daily worship come together on a Sunday, anything is possible. The music begins and we all get to our feet, and Jesus shows up. Just as He does every day, for every one of us.
Worship is the love letter we write with our lives. One day, one line at a time
