For the Life of the World

Only a brief post today - I am trying to finish up my lesson for Sunday morning, focusing on Luke 10 & 11. All I can say is that those kids are lucky I only have them for an hour; I'm really getting on a roll and have to very intentionally trim what I want to say. I pray that God softens their hearts and that I am faithfully teaching what he wants them to hear.

Anyways, I was reading some of Fr. Schmemann's "For the Life of the World" yesterday, and his words whispered to my soul, breathing hope into my current struggles.

"...to enter into that joy [of the Lord], so as to be a witness to it in the world, is indeed the very calling of the Church, its essential leitourgia, the sacrament by which it 'becomes what it is.'"

I hunger to enter into that joy, for the fullness of worship! There is a deep emptiness in me that can only be filled by it. I am sick to death of shallow, man-centered worship. Worship that is more concerned with being comfortable and inoffensive, than it is coming into the presence of God with joy, thanksgiving and praise.

"We are already far beyond the categories of common worship and prayer. The purpose of this 'coming together' is not simply to add a religious dimension to the natural community, to make it 'better' - more responsible, more Christian. The purpose is to fulfill the Church, and that means to make present the One in whom all things are at their end, and all things are at their beginning...The early Christians realized that in order to become the temple of the Holy Spirit they must ascend to heaven where Christ has ascended...In church today, we so often find we meet only the same old world, not Christ and His Kingdom. We do not realize that we never get anywhere because we never leave any place behind us."