baroque - or the feelings of awe

Some would press for plain worship places outdoors or interior because of the risk of wowing newcomers with the man-made wonder and distracting from the God-made wonder.
But others are hungry for an experience with lots of music, movement or dance, plenty of interchange to engage the whole self - body and heart and mind- in praising God. So the brassier, the more syncopated, multi-colored and digitally connected, the better. When VR goggles become affordable, let us have them on our heads, too, by this logic & this appetite for stimulation.

This image, https://www.flickr.com/photos/kritayuga/18425591593/in/explore-2015-06-22/, is a sweeping example of a man-made space that may catch you up in its majesty and scale.
The danger is to confuse the physical space with the thing it points to, God's own majesty, wonder and awe. So as long as you understand God's ever-presence, everywhere, and not confuse this built-space with God's postal address, then all is well.

The pause that refreshes

On this pleasant day of worship with church windows open to the bright green and gentle breeze outdoors, the minister invokes the Spirit of God and the time we dedicate to praising his name and worshiping his goodness inside and outside ourselves, no matter the tribulations, irritations or temptations that may otherwise preoccupy our minds.
     There is a cascade of distractions, beeps and clicks, free trials (ironic wordplay?) on offer, and efforts to make us spend, consume and imagine ourselves doing so bigger, faster, and pricier. So keeping one hand on God's Will is one way to filter and tone-down this clutter. Doing so gives some relief from these pressures and it gives some hope of maintaining a free-flowing heart and mind, able to look long, deep and wide and our times and within that our own lives and those around us. If not daily or even more frequently, prayer or worship or study or fellowship provides "the pause that refreshes," to borrow an advertising slogan of the past generation or two.
     Things like preoccupations filling our attention, burdens and sources of anxiety, general mental and residential clutter, and the spiritual/mental friction of entangling fine-print all deflect our gaze from our LORD and way to salvation.

surrender, serenity, serendipity

There is a suggestive overlap in first 2 syllables; but probably just happy coincidence.
     During men's bible study the impossibility of surrendering completely to God's will during one's mortal times came up in the discussion. It would seem that while you have mass, motivation, and breath that forever you will hold onto at least a thread of autonomy and authority; striving for a degree of independent scope of action, rather than always to pray or defer or reflect on God's will first. Of course some persons can train themselves from the knee-jerk habit of acting first and thinking of God's place only in hindsight. A supple heart can be trained by steady effort and knowing 'experience is the best teacher'.
     The image of golf, tennis, calligraphy or another skill-based learning curve comes to mind: the beginner grips too hard in an effort to control or overcontrol and overthink things. But in the course of gaining maturity and wider scope of experiences, the same person can lighten the grip and seize firmly only at the precise moments called for. By maintaining a light grip on one's days, it is possible to enhance one's nimble responsiveness, supple reactions, and alertness to surrounding conditions. As with mastery of a skill, so too with mastery of communicating with God and with one's neighbors; indeed, there may even come an ability to love one's enemies.

Ps 92: music? life flashing by? wrong end of the funnel

Men's Bible study this week included the 92nd Psalm which opens with the subject of music. So what exactly is music in the interplay of people in fellowship and in relating to God? Surely it is something expressive, although it can be produced in rote, literal ways, lacking the warmth and presence of inspired and purposeful sounds. Sort of like the all-purpose word 'love' in English (where the Greek language of the NT distinguished 4 separate words, depending on emphasis: affection, loyatly, belonging, etc), so also for 'music' there is one vast word to include sounds organized for lyrics and tunes without words. Some songs have delicate and complicated texts, while others are simple and repetitive to lead one into meditative release or congregational unity. Some music engages the verbal part of the mind; others engage the heart or physical part of one's self with percussive, syncopated or boisterous expression. And so is this semi-linguistic or sometimes non-verbal form of worship (as well as other times in recreation, meditation, comfort or protest) a channel of communication mainly - a way to reach others; to reach out and other times to reach in? The harmonies, rhythms and textures do something; they transact something; they form a flash-flood: a powerful and possibly dangerous current that sweeps along everyone to a happy place or sad place for the short time that it flows.

In the psalm there is the imagery of those ignoring or distracted from God who are like grass in the morning - prolific and short lived. By contrast there is the image of the palms trees, persistent, fruitful and suited to harsh conditions. These are meant to illustrate the righteous seekers after God. Elsewhere in the Bible we read that all God's creatures are loved; but that some seek him and others don't accept the love he gives them. But sinners big and small, those coming to him early or late are loved equally. So even a deathbed repentance is valuable. By extension and knowing God's equal force of presence over long scales of time and microseconds, perhaps the near-death-experience (NDE) and those whose demise is final who report a rapid replay of the important experiences along life's way in the blink of an eye, but which feels like slow-motion, is yet another window of opportunity for the unbeliever to repent and to seek salvation in God, right up to the final heartbeat. To an outsider unable to see that final replay of the person's life, all comes to an end. But in God's time --frozen, speeded up, or experienced at a waking human pace --there is time enough to transact the relationship between creature and creator one final time.

As the men's group conversation went from tangent to tangent the image of a funnel came up: so many novices, newly exploring God's word and the significance of one's life in view of Jesus' lessons, tend to look at God through the wrong end of the funnel. The wide end points to the self, making that part the most important, while the narrow end points to God, allowing only a narrow field of view and blocking out the many other surrounding distractions and temptations. However, a truer relationship to God follows and flows from the other direction of the funnel: the wide end points to all of creation in which God's presence can be seen and felt, while the narrow end points to the self.