2 Samuel – Salvaged Faith

Sing! Play! Summer! – Lord of the Dance

Posted on August 26, 2019Leave a comment

Text: 2 Samuel 6:14-22

There was a stately, beautiful church on the corner of Main and Broad streets. The members were known for their love and care for one another.
On Easter Sunday, the pews were full of folks in their Sunday best, smiling graciously to one another and all of the guests who were among them. Everything was perfect.
Worship had begun, when all of a sudden a scruffy man in a faded shirt walked in. His jeans had holes in them and his sneakers were tattered. He looked around for a seat, but they were all taken.
Every eye followed him as he walked all the way to the front of the church, still looking for a place to sit.
Reaching the first pew and not finding a spot… or anyone who would make room, he sat down cross legged in the aisle.

Everybody was wondering who this was, but even more than that, they were wondering who was going to do something about it.
The organist began to play the opening hymn, but nobody was really listening.
Then, Mr. Sims, a stately older gentleman who had served as an usher for more than half a century, made his way from the back of the church down the aisle.
Somebody had to do something, after all.
Everyone watched as the old man bent down and said: “I just want to say how good it is to have you here.”
And Mr. Sims slowly lowered himself with great difficulty and sat down by the young visitor. He handed him a bulletin, and offered to share his hymnal.
They sat and worshiped together.

What does it really mean to fully worship God?
What does it mean to join in the dance of faith?
It is not about comfort or safety or the clothes you are wearing.
Worship is a risk.
It is a personal and corporate encounter with the divine and we are not in charge.
When we really place our lives before this God, we will not be the same.

Think of those two men in the story. Both took a risk in the presence of God.
The young man was a stranger, coming in off the street, and while everyone was dressed in their Sunday finest, he didn’t care what others thought.
He didn’t care if everyone else was watching.
He was coming to the Lord – and nothing was going to stop him.
The older gentleman had just as much, if not more to lose.
He was established and respected.
Everyone in that church expected him to ask the young man to move.
But Mr. Sims broke with convention and let the Spirit guide him to the front of the church to sit down with that young man.

In 1987, Susanna Clark and Richard Leigh’s song, “Come from the Heart,” included the lines –

“You’ve got to sing like you don’t need the money
Love like you’ll never get hurt
You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watchin’
It’s gotta come from the heart if you want it to work.”

The young man and Mr. Sims joined in the dance of faith and didn’t care if anyone was watching. They just put their heart into it.
And in our reading from 2 Samuel, David embraces that same heartfelt abandon leading the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem.
Let’s explore for moment the risk of this moment of worship and the courage it took for David to truly dance.
For years, the ark has been in the hands of the Philistines.
David wants to show that his rule is connected to the lordship, power, and presence of God so he has decided to go and recapture the ark and bring it to Jerusalem.
He gathers thirty thousand of his best men and they go and capture the ark from their enemies.
You might expect a solemn and formal military processional bringing this prized possession back to the Israelites. But King David led a celebration march and they praised God with all of their might with songs and instruments and drums.
In fact, the people were so caught up in their celebration an accident occurred.
Passing over rough terrain, one of the oxen stumbled and the ark nearly fell to the ground.
But a man named Uzzah instinctively reached out to grab onto the ark and lift it to safety.
Whew, we might think to ourselves… disaster averted.

But just the encounter Isaiah had in the temple which we discussed a few weeks ago, this moment reminds us of the holy, other, awesome power of God.
This ark was not a box holding some important documents – it was a sacred object that could bring both blessing and harm.
It was to be touched and handled only by those who had properly prepared, only by the Levites.
The young man was immediately struck dead.

In the middle of the road, in the middle of their journey, all of the celebrations stop.
David is so troubled by these occurrences, so angry at God for what has happened, he refuses to carry the ark the rest of the way to Jerusalem.
He is afraid of what will happen when God’s presence comes into his royal city.
You see, David isn’t perfect. He knows about the sin of his own life and fears for how God’s holy presence might alter the course of his reign.
So instead, he puts the ark in the safekeeping of a family in a village nearby.

David’s heartfelt abandon is closed off because of the fear of being burned, of being rejected, or being found unworthy.

Can you imagine how the story of our faith might have gone had Jesus been afraid to dance?
Sydney Carter’s famous hymn tells the story of Jesus Christ, without ever using his name.
The dance of creation and his birth in Bethlehem…
The call for Pharisees and fishermen to follow… and the refusal of many to join.
The holy people shame him for his acts of love and power.
He is arrested, abused, and killed…
And yet, not once did the dance stop.
And never has the Lord of the Dance stopped inviting us to join in.

There are a lot of people in this world… probably even here in this room… whose hearts are closed off.
People afraid to let God in.
People afraid to make a fool of themselves for God because of what others might think.
People ashamed of their past and whether they will be welcomed.
People who aren’t quite sure they can celebrate with all of their might before God.
Kate Huey writes,

“Jubilation is a word we rarely use, perhaps because such a feeling has been limited for many, for the most part, to sports and, perhaps, the occasional political victory. But what if we felt deep-down-in-our-hearts jubilation over what God is doing in our lives? Would we dance, too?”
Henry Brinton has compared worship… to a modern dance solo by Paul Taylor, the dancer/choreographer who “simply stood motionless on stage for four minutes….The dancing we do in church tends to be quite similar to Paul Taylor’s solo. What we do is nothing – we just stand still, hardly moving a muscle. Our worship of God involves our minds… our tongues, but rarely our whole bodies.”

What would it take to get our bodies more involved in worship?
What would give us the courage to let go and let the dance carry us along?
Maybe, we need to give up control.
Maybe we need to let the rhythm of the song shape and move us.
Maybe we need to let Christ lead.

In the book, The Soul of Tomorrow’s Church, Kent Ira Groff advocates for including rhythm instruments in every worship service. He notes composer Brian Wren’s understanding that “rhythm tries to move you bodily.”
No wonder that from forever and everywhere the drum has been an instrument of healing, reminiscent of the heartbeat of God – use in primal caves, rock bands, sophisticated symphonies. The pipe organ is a wonderful instrument… but in combining many instruments in one, it decreased the participation of the many…
Let me say that again… when we combined many instruments into one, we decreased the participation of the many.
You see, when we clap our hands, or tap our toes, or play along on other instruments, or use our own instrument, our voice, we are joining in the dance.
We are taking a risk.
We are offering ourselves.
We are participating is something bigger than ourselves.
We join the rest of creation and cry out with our whole being – the Lord is Good.

You’ve got to sing like you don’t need the money
Love like you’ll never get hurt
You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watchin’
It’s gotta come from the heart if you want it to work.

Just like we might be afraid to step beyond our comfort zones and truly praise God with our whole bodies…
just like we might be afraid to truly welcome into our midst those who don’t look anything like us…
just like we might be afraid of what will happen if we open ourselves up to God’s presence…
King David was afraid of what it meant to invite God into his city. He was afraid of what might happen to himself and his reign.
In many ways, he had a healthy understanding of the holy power and otherness of the Lord… but he let his fear overwhelm his ability to truly trust God.

But then he decided to try again. He worked up the courage to let God lead.
They took the ark out of the house and had moved just six steps down the road when David was so overwhelmed with joy and thanksgiving… with jubilation!… that he sacrificed a bull and a calf in praise to God.
And he took off his royal garments and there in front of all the people he danced before God with all of his might.
He shed his fear, he shed all of the expectations people had of him, he shed his denial of God’s holiness, and he worshiped and praised with heartfelt abandon.

As the dancing proceeded back to Jerusalem and as they got close to the city gates, David’s wife Michal saw him out there.
She saw him without his royal robes, dancing among the commoners.
She saw him making a fool of himself, rather than maintaining his composure.
And then, she confronted him about it.
But David replied, “I was celebrating before the Lord, who chose me… and I will celebrate before the Lord again! I may humiliate myself even more, and I may be humbled in my own eyes.”
He spoke with that same spirit Paul did when he said that we should be fools for Christ – laying it all out on the line to praise and honor the God who gives us life.
Michal, the scribes, the Pharisees, those people in the pews on Easter morning… they could get so caught up in tradition, on what was supposed to happen, in what was appropriate or required…
But as Jesus reminds us over and over again in the gospels, outward trappings are not important.
They don’t make us righteous or unrighteous, worthy or unworthy.
It is our hearts that matter.
What we give to God that matters.
Whether we leave behind ourselves and join in the dance.
So friends, wherever you are, whoever you are, let’s dance.
Amen.

The Gift of Goodness

Posted on July 25, 2010Leave a comment

We’ve heard of goody-two-shoes. Good riddance. Goodness gracious great balls of fire. And Goodbye. Things can taste good, we like to read good books and tell good stories. We tell our children to be good and to get good grades.

But what does it really mean to be good?

The Random House dictionary has 41 different definitions for the word… and that’s just the adjectives.

But in general, I think we usually say that something is good if it fulfills our expectations – if it does what it is supposed to – and if we get some kind of benefit from it.

Take our cookies for example. If we had taken a bite of the cookie and they were old or dried out… they wouldn’t be so good. They wouldn’t have been all that they were made up to be.

In the same way… we are good when we fulfill the expectations of ourselves and others and if we benefit others as we do so.

I keep using the word benefit… and that is because there are lots of things that fulfill their purpose that we would never call good. For example – those cookies might taste good – but if you never got to eat them… if I never shared them… they would have been good to no one but myself.

Or, think about what makes a good chef’s knife. It is sharp, it cuts the way that it is designed to, and we can use it to prepare food and to eventually be fed. We benefit from the design and use of a good chef’s knife.

But in the hands of someone unskilled, like a child, the knife becomes dangerous and what we thought was good could harm them.

In the hands of someone who is angry or revengeful – the very thing that we called good only a moment ago can turn into a weapon. It still has the same qualities that fulfilled its purpose… only it is being used for ill rather than good.

So to be good… we must fulfill the expectations of ourselves and others and benefit others as we do so.

Throughout the scriptures – we hear stories of men and women who were good: Noah was a good man and so his family was saved from the flood. Lot was a good man and so his family was rescued from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Rahab the prostitute took in the spies from Israel and her family was saved from the battle of Jericho.

But there are plenty of people who were not so good. Who didn’t do what was expected of them. Who lived not to benefit others, but to benefit only themselves.

And it is to such people as these that the prophets were sent. Prophets like Samuel, Elijah and Elish, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Habbakuk, Hosea… and our prophet for this morning: Nathan.

We have here a story of paradox. David was a man after God’s own heart. We always think back on all of the good things that he did – his trust in God, his loyalty to Saul, his music, and his love… but in some ways, David was a kind of bad dude.

As we heard this morning, David breaks two commandments all in a weeks time. He sleeps with another man’s wife… one of his soldiers Uriah’s wife Bathsheeba… and then to cover up the fact that he has done so – he has Uriah killed out on the battlefield.

Nathan’s job here is simple… bring God’s judgment upon David for these acts. But what I want to look at this morning is how the goodness of Nathan shines through.

First, Nathan helped the truth to come to light… Ephesians 5 says that God’s children live as children of light… “for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth.” He didn’t shy away from the fact that David had done wrong, but made sure that David knew that he had done wrong.

Second, Nathan knew what David had done wrong… He knew that he was unrighteous

The right thing to do as soon as David confessed would be to have David stoned… but goodness goes beyond simple righteousness… goodness goes beyond simply pointing out the wrongs in others.

He not only told the truth, but nowhere do we have any indication that Nathan is prepared to follow the letter of the law. He instead waits for a response from David.

As people of faith, too often we are quick to bring judgment upon others and stand waiting with signs of condemnation. We are good at bringing unrighteousness to light. We are terrible about leading people into repentance.

When our righteousness is only about what is right and what is wrong, it becomes a weapon of judgment.

But by telling David a story, Nathan does just that. He helps him to see what is wrong, and in doing so, he also provides an opportunity for David to confess, to repent, and to live a different life.

Third, Nathan blessed David because of his repentance

He didn’t just bring the right thing to light, but he went the extra mile. Nathan did what was needed to set David back on the right path… what was needed to build him up and to help him live a better and more faithful life.

There would be consequences from his actions… and yet there was also room for God’s grace and mercy to flow back into David’s life and Nathan not only acknowledged that, but helped to point it out.

As Christians, we believe that all have fallen short of the glory of God. All of us are in need of grace and repentance.

I believe the basis of righteousness is fact that God sets us right. God forgives us. God leads us on the right paths. It has nothing to do with how many answers we get right or how many good deeds we do. It has everything to do with God.

But you see, that grace and that mercy that flows into our lives is not ours alone. It is meant to be shared.

If we fail to extend grace and mercy and love and forgiveness to our brothers and sisters, than we merely turn the precious gift we have been given into a weapon of destruction.

Repent…

Posted on August 17, 2009Leave a comment

(these are the notes for this mornings sermon… structure provided by www.creativeprayer.com)

Scripture: Isaiah 6:5-7, 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13

Confession is tricky business. Like King David, sometimes we have to have the injustices we have committed shown to us in a new light before we even understand that we have done anything wrong. While it is easy to point out the failings of others, it is difficult to see the brokenness in our own.

I pray that none of us have committed the kinds of grievances that David did. He was in a position of power and in the minds of many probably used that power to sleep with Bathsheeba. Then when she was found to be pregnant, David tried to trick her husband and then ended up having him murdered. That’s quite a few sins wrapped up in to one big mess!

Because some sins seem so large, because we are here in the church and we know that Christ died for us, sin doesn’t seem to be such a big problem. In part, maybe that’s because we don’t really understand it. It is difficult to accept that even when we are trying to be good; there are areas of our life that remain against God’s ideal for us. We may still harbor lusts, or tell lies, or make hurtful comments to others.

In the S.A.C.C. group on Tuesday mornings we have been looking recently at the 10 commandments. James Moore suggests that instead of saying we have “broken a commandment” we should rather say that we have been broken. When we let greed take over our life, there is nothing about God’s word that comes apart… but our lives do. When we let anger take over our life, God’s word remains firm… but our lives crumble. When we worship false gods and idols, God remains steadfast… but our lives teeter on the unshaky ground that we have chosen to rest upon.

We all have places in our lives where we are not fully living the life God has in mind for us. And as hard as it is to accept our failures, it may be even harder to confess them – to name them – even privately in prayer to God. However, that is what God asks us to do:

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Today in worship, we remember that confession is one of those four basic elements of worship. We remember that Isaiah stood before the throne of God and said out loud that he was a man of unclean lips… that he lived among a people of unclean lips.

So we too, need to stand before our God and confess our sins. We will take the next 20 min. in silence to do this in a tangible way. As you may have noticed, there are buckets of sand around the room. When our time of reflection starts, you will go to a bucket, no more than 3 people to each, and you will read the directions for that specific bucket. When you have finished at that bucket move to another bucket and do the same process over again. Keep doing this until I bring us back together here before the cross.

(prayer stations – for specific questions, see the link above)

I want all of us to stop where we are and to hold your bag up with both hands. We each lug around these sacks full of sand and we are weighed down by them. They represent all of the ways that we are broken, and ways that we have broken others. There is nothing we can ever do to repair the damage we have done. Left on our own – we would cry out with Isaiah – Woe is me! for I am lost!

But we are not left alone. The God who has always been with us – always gently reminding us of the paths of righteousness – came down to be among us. God came down to show us how to live and to love… and came down to offer us life and life abundant.

In the gospel of John we hear these words:

JOHN 6:48-58
48I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ 53So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’

Christ came to offer us life and life abundant. Here at the cross, we are invited to set our bags down – to let our sins go – to say out loud like David – “I have sinned against the Lord,” but to also hear the words of grace and mercy and forgiveness. “The Lord has put away your sin… take, eat of this bread, and you shall not die.”

As we sing “Come, Sinners, to the Gospel Feast,” I want you to think about what it means to say yes… what it means to carry these confessions to the Lord. And then as we continue to sing… and as the music continues to play… carry your sack to the cross and leave it there, and take a piece of bread from the loaf – knowing that all who eat the bread of heaven will have life and life abundant.

Let us pray:

O God, make of every thing and judge of all that you have made, from the dust of the earth you have formed us and from the dust of death you would raise us up.
By the redemptive power of the cross, create in us clean hearts and put within us a new spirit, that we may repent of our sins and lead lives worth of your calling; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (#353 UMH)

Dance Like No One is Watching

Posted on August 9, 2009Leave a comment

Perhaps you have heard the story of the church on the corner of Main and Broad streets. It was stately and magnificent in structure and style. Much love and caring were shared
between the members.

One particular Easter Sunday, the seats were filled to capacity. Participants sat in pews wearing their Sunday best, smiling graciously and nodding to acknowledge each other and the guests. Everything seemed perfect.

Worship services were well under way when an unshaven man in a faded shirt came through the front door. His jeans were torn at the knees and ragged at the bottom, his sneakers tattered. His eyes searched for a seat at the rear of the room, but they were all filled. All eyes followed him as he made his way to the front of the church, still looking for a seat.

Reaching the first pew and still not finding anywhere to sit… or anyone who would make room, he folded his legs underneath himself and sat on the floor of the aisle.

Everybody was wondering who this was, but even more than that, they were wondering who was going to do something about it.. The organist began to play the opening hymn, but nobody was really listening.

A hush fell over the congregation as Mr. Sims, a stately old gentleman who had served as an usher for more than half a century, made his way slowly from the back of the church down the aisle.

Everybody knew what he was going to do. Somebody had to do something, afterall. Dressed in his usual three-piece black suit, he steadied himself with his silver-tipped cane. He walked down the aisle and he came up to the young man.

Everyone watched as the old man bent down and said: “I just want to say how good it is to have you here.” And Mr. Sims slowly lowered himself with great difficulty and sat down by the young visitor. He offered him a bulletin, and offered to share his hymnal. And they sat together, and they worshiped.

This morning – as we listen for what it means to worship God fully – to gather together and to praise our Creator – that story of the old man and the young man really speaks to me. You see, both of them took a risk to come together in the presence of God.

The young man was a stranger, coming in off the street, and even though everyone around him was dressed in their Sunday finest, he didn’t care what others thought. He didn’t care if everyone else was watching. He didn’t care if what he did by sitting there before God upset other people. He was coming to the Lord – and nothing was going to stop him.

In a similar manner, the older gentleman had just as much, if not more to lose. He was established and respected. Everyone in that church expected him to tell the young man to move, or to walk him out of the church for acting so “inappropriately.” But Mr. Sims broke with convention, broke with tradition, let go of his ways and let the Spirit guide him to the front of the church to sit down with that young man.

There is a quote, sometimes attributed to Mark Twain that goes:

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth

That is exactly what our older gentleman and the young guy were doing in that warm little story. And in our passage from the book of Samuel this morning – that kind of heartfelt abandon is depicted as King David leads the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem for the very first time.

For years, the ark has been in the hands of the Philistines – but to go and recapture the ark and to bring it to Jerusalem… the place David has set up as his royal city… means that David is showing how his rule with connected to the lordship, power, and presence of God.

At the outset of this journey, David does what is expected of him. He gathers thirty thousand of his best men and they go and bring the ark up out of the place it has been. One would expect a solemn and formal military processional bringing this prized possession back into the hands of the Israelites. But our scripture tells us that King David led the celebration and they praised God with all of their might with songs and instruments and drums.

In fact, the people were so caught up in their celebration, that an accident occurred. As the ark was being carried over the terrain, one of the oxen stumbled and the ark nearly fell to the ground. But a man named Uzzah instinctively reached out to grab onto the ark and lift it to safety.

Whew, we might think to ourselves… disaster averted. But just like Isaiah’s encounter with God in the temple, we are reminded about just how holy – just how other – God really is. This ark was not simply a box holding some important documents – it was a sacred object that could bring both blessing and harm. It was to be touched and handled only by those who had properly prepared, only by the Levites. Just like the King Uzziah who later is cursed for entering the temple and burning incense to God on his own, the military commander Uzzah is punished for his act. He is instantly killed as a result of touching the ark.

Here, by the side of the road, in the middle of their journey, all of the celebrations stop. David is so troubled by these occurrences, so angry at God for what has happened, that he refuses to carry the ark the rest of the way to Jerusalem. He is afraid of what will happen when God’s presence comes into his royal city. He knows the wrongs he has done in his own life and doesn’t think he will last long in the power of God. David closes himself off to the promise and power of the ark and puts it in the safekeeping of a family in a village nearby.

David’s heartfelt abandon is closed off because of the fear of being burned, of being rejected, or being found unworthy.

I think that there are many people, probably here in this room this morning, whose hearts have been closed off. People who are afraid to let God in. People who are afraid to make a fool of themselves for God because of what others might think. People who aren’t quite sure they are ready to take the risk to celebrate with all of their might before God. Am I right?

One of my favorite biblical commentators, Kate Huey writes, “Jubilation is a word we rarely use, perhaps because such a feeling has been limited for many, for the most part, to sports and, perhaps, the occasional political victory. But what if we felt deep-down-in-our-hearts jubilation over what God is doing in our lives? Would we dance, too?

Henry Brinton has compared worship… to a modern dance solo by Paul Taylor, the dancer/choreographer who “simply stood motionless on stage for four minutes….The dancing we do in church tends to be quite similar to Paul Taylor’s solo. What we do is nothing – we just stand still, hardly moving a muscle. Our worship of God involves our minds, our hearts, and our tongues, but rarely our whole bodies.”

In the book, The Soul of Tomorrow’s Church, Kent Ira Groff writes that we need to include rhythm into every worship service. He quotes Brian Wren in saying that “rhythm tries to move you bodily.” No wonder that from forever and everywhere the drum has been an instrument of healing, reminiscent of the heartbeat of God – use in primal caves, rock bands, sophisticated symphonies. The pipe organ is a wonderful instrument… but in combining many instruments in one, it decreased the participation of the many…” When we clap our hands, or tap our toes, or play along on other instruments, we are joining the whole of creation in crying out with our whole bodies – the Lord is Good.

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth

Just like we might be afraid to step beyond our comfort zones and truly praise God with our whole bodies… just like we might be afraid to truly welcome into our midst those who don’t look anything like us… just like we might be afraid of what will happen if we open ourselves up to God’s presence… King David was afraid of what it meant to invite God into his city. He was afraid of what might happen to himself and his reign. In many ways, he rightly understood the holy power and otherness of the Lord… but he had let his fear overwhelm his ability to truly trust God.

For three months, things went on like this, until word came to David about the blessings that had come to the family the ark had been left with. A glimmer of possibility and trust began to burn again in David’s heart and he decided to try again.

The ark was taken out of the house and after just six steps, David was so overwhelmed with joy and thanksgiving that he sacrificed a bull and a calf. And he took off his royal garments and there in front of all the people he danced before God with all of his might. He shed his fear, he shed all of the expectations people had of him, he shed his denial of God’s holiness, and he worshipped and praised with heartfelt abandon.

When Michal confronted David about his actions his words were clear: It was before the LORD, who chose me that I danced—I will celebrate before the LORD. 22 I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes.”

He spoke with the same spirit that Paul did when he said that we should be fools for Christ – laying it all out on the line to praise and honor the God who gives us life.

That is a very different attitude towards worship than the one espoused by Michal… or by the Pharisees that Jesus encounters in our gospel reading. They were so caught up on tradition – on doing what they were supposed to, on what was appropriate and required, that they left their heart and mind and soul and body out of worship.

But Jesus words remind us that the outward trappings are not important. They don’t make us righteous or unrighteous, worthy or unworthy. It is our hearts that matter. It is what we give to God that matters. Or as our Psalter puts it…. we should come with clean hands and pure hearts before God… that we should come bringing our full selves with the right intentions.

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth