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God Gathers His People
practice, but in the thoroughly biblical sense of focusing our soul's longings on the God of the Creation "in whom we live and move and have our being." The author is Eugene Peterson. GOD GATHERS HIS PEOPLE In worship God gathers his people to himself as center: "The Lord reigns" (Ps. 93:1). Worship is a meeting at the center so that our lives are centered in God and not lived eccentrically. We worship so that we live in response to and from this center, the living God. Failure to worship consigns us to a life of spasms and jerks, at the mercy of every advertisement, every seduction, every siren. Without worship we live manipulated and manipulating lives. We move in either frightened panic or deluded lethargy as we are, in turn, alarmed by specters and soothed by placebos. If there is no center, there is no circumference. People who do not worship are swept into a vast restlessness, epidemic in the world, with no steady direction and no sustaining purpose. - Eugene Peterson, LIVING THE MESSAGE, HarperSanFrancisco, 1996, p. 74. [Lord, forgive me for too often "centering" my attention and affection on the many distractions of life. By your mercy, help me to find my center in you. Amen!] Have a great week, Chip Stam Pastor of Worship and Music Chapel Hill Bible Church Chapel Hill, North Carolina |