Keep The Song Going

Each week we plan an order of worship for our eleven o’clock service on Sunday morning. It does not change all that much. In fact, if you are a regular attendee, you probably do not even need a bulletin to know what comes next.

We usually begin with the Call to Worship—an invitation for everyone present to join together in the worship of Almighty God, the Creator, Sustainer, and Savior of the world.

And just like that, we are supposed to worship.

I have often wondered if it really works that way.

Part of me is usually still cluttered with the distractions, worries, conversations, responsibilities, disappointments, and unfinished business of the previous week. Yet suddenly, because the clock says eleven and someone says, “Let us worship God,” I am supposed to set all of that aside and become completely present in the presence of God.

I am not sure that is a realistic expectation.

Can you turn worship on like a light switch and, at the same time, turn everything else in your life off?

I have trouble doing it.

I sometimes suffer from what I call AWD—Attention Worship Disorder.

I cannot always get through the invocation without my mind racing off in a thousand different directions. One thought leads to another, then another, and before I know it, God has been left in the dust while my thoughts take flight.

I try to pull my mind back down into the sanctuary of God’s presence, but it can be a struggle. My thoughts are swift on their feet.

Then I hear the words of Psalm 100:

“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing.”

Singing helps me.

Music has a way of gathering my scattered thoughts and bringing them home. A hymn can settle me. A familiar melody can draw me back when my mind begins to drift.

But lately I have been thinking about that phrase: “Come into his presence with singing.”

Maybe the psalmist is saying more than simply, “Sing when you get to worship.”

Perhaps we are supposed to come with a song already in our hearts.

Before the organ plays. Before the piano begins. Before the guitarist strums the first chord.

Maybe worship begins long before Sunday morning.

Every life has a melody. Every soul has lyrics.

The question is: What song are we living by?

What music shapes the way we move through our days? What rhythm informs our thoughts, our attitudes, our relationships, and our behavior? Is there a spiritual meter beneath our lives that helps shape the people we are becoming?

The old hymn says:

“There’s within my heart a melody,
Jesus whispers sweet and low…”

And then comes the refrain:

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus—
sweetest name I know,
fills my every longing,
keeps me singing as I go.”

That last phrase stays with me.

Keeps me singing as I go.

Maybe that is what worship is really about.

If worship is more than an hour on Sunday morning—if it becomes a way of living, loving, serving, forgiving, giving, noticing, and walking with God—then when the Call to Worship comes on Sunday morning, we are not beginning something entirely new.

We are simply continuing the song.

The melody has already been playing through Monday and Tuesday, through work and worry, through laughter and grief, through ordinary conversations and unexpected interruptions. Sunday morning gathers all those scattered notes together and reminds us once again what song we belong to.

Our minds may still wander.

Mine certainly will.

Thoughts will intrude. Worries will follow us through the sanctuary doors. There will be moments when our attention drifts somewhere far away from the prayer being prayed or the words being sung.

But perhaps a wandering mind does not mean worship has failed.

Perhaps worship is not about perfectly concentrating on God for sixty uninterrupted minutes.

Perhaps it is about learning to live with God so deeply woven into the fabric of our lives that, even when our thoughts wander, we keep finding our way back to the melody.

Then, when someone stands on Sunday morning and says, “Let us worship God,” the invitation is not really to start singing.

It is simply to remember the song that has been playing all along.

And keep singing as we go.