Worship is shiny

     The night was, as they used to say on the television show, "Firefly," shiny.

            It was a glorious sight, which translates to great, wonderful, unimaginable...Big ol’ moon reaching out to grab to us, enthrall us; a fully packed coliseum, persons most of whom were youngsters, and persons who were all there because they love Contemporary Christian worship.

            Shiny.

            Last night we sang, we danced, we hugged even strangers, and we were together because Jesus came to give his life for us. Nothing else really mattered on this one night.

            Shiny.

            Once we were asked to raise our hands in worship as Matthew West, Laura Daigle, and many others sang their souls out at a civic center in Bossier City, La.

            Shiny.

            All this makes those of us who have even a bit of an inkling that what we want to do with our lives is celebrate them … in song, in dance, in reciting scripture, none of which is a celebration of any even in the past. We can celebrate, uh, the future perhaps and certainly the now. We look past the idea of shouting about the future, into the present moment that is filled with so much promise that sometimes it blinds us.

            Here’s where we get confused.

            Through it all, through it all we gather up our stuff – forgetting for a moment that we gained so much stuff in the past, forgetting for but a moment that we have gained a pile of stuff in the present. We tell our Lord and our Savior that we’ve gained so very much, indeed. For a moment in the present, we see the mistakes, the failures, the falls. But we can’t stay there, so Jesus allows us to look beyond the piles of today and to begin to celebrate the present.

            Stay there, friends.

            Don’t be drawn into fights for whom time has passed and the battle let go. Don’t look to the past, forever screaming “We’ve never done that before,” into the cold and distant wind.

            We can (and must?) continue to grow, as churches, in worship, and prayerfully in wonder.

            Our words fail Him.

            Our thoughts are not his thoughts.

            But our thoughts often are not our friends seated just feet from us.

            The point is this: I love contemporary music. It stimulates me. It drives home the point of worship to me.

            But I understand it isn’t the be-all and the end-all. There’s more out there, for everyone.

            Still, I will celebrate the Lord in this manner. I also will allow those who prefer a more traditional worship setting and slate of music to worship in the manner they so choose.

            It’s the only way to continued to be enthralled.