Worship Babies

In many ways, the time I get to spend with my girls is the closest I get to true worship with God. The presence, joy, peace that I experience with them is presence, joy, peace that is from God as a gift - and in worship, for God.
I know how much I've been pre-conditioned to expect holy moments of worship in some service during the chorus of some song... or 5:30 in the morning as I sit in the dark praying. But even though my theology as always told me this - the last few years of life have revealed this to be more true and real than ever before... How expansive the heart of worship is! We do our faith and most of all our Maker an irretrievable dis-service when we leave such narrow descriptors of worship. Even perhaps that we the need to place such stark "descriptors" on it suggests that we are already missing it.

Is worship not being present in the presence of God? Anywhere and everywhere we are... to acknowledge His presence there before us... there with us presently... and His presence transcending "us" and "this" on into the future.

And God's presence is everywhere, flowing all over His creation. In the beginning of his book The Divine Dance author Richard Rohr writes about the presence of God, "This triune God allows you, impels you, to live easily with God everywhere and all the time: in the budding of a plant, the smile of a gardener, the excitement of a teenage boy over his new girlfriend, the tireless determination of a research scientist, the pride of a mechanic over his hidden work under the hood, the loving nuzzling of horses, the tenderness with which eagles feed their chicks, and the downward flow of every mountain stream." (1)
(Yes, it does sound a little like a mystical Hallmark card!)

God is present all around us and His Spirit is constantly inviting us to participate in His holy flow... inviting us into worship.

Those little teeth that peek out at me when they smile. The dimples that simultaneously sink on their cheeks. The little belly laughs. The stuffing cereal in their mouths. The "Dada's" and "Mama's" - all invocations to worship.
I'm sure had it all been recorded there were chapters more on Jesus' words about the kingdom of heaven and little children. Yet, what we have is enough to know - The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. (2)

And that calls me to worship, today.

1 - The Divine Dance - pg. 38
2 - Matthew 19:14