Underhill: the tide of worship
Advent II
Meditation:
I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling...
—1 Timothy 2:8 (ESV)
Quotation:
Many a congregation when it assembles in church must look to the angels like a muddy puddly shore at low tide; littered with every kind of rubbish and odds and ends—a distressing sort of spectacle. And then the tide of worship comes in, and it’s all gone: the dead sea-urchins and jelly-fish, the paper and the empty tins and the nameless bits of rubbish. The cleansing sea flows over the whole lot. So we are released from a narrow, selfish outlook on the universe by a common act of worship. Our little human affairs are reduced to their proper proportion when seen over against the spaceless Majesty and Beauty of God.
... Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Collected Papers of Evelyn Underhill, Longmans, Green and Co., 1946, p. 89 (see the book)
See also 1 Tim. 2:8; Ps. 51:17; 147:11; Isa. 26:8-9; 58:6-8; John 4:23-24; 1 Pet. 2:9
Quiet time reflection:
Lord, if You wash me, I shall be clean indeed.
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