worship Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

Linger

The coffee cup is hot in my hands. I sit under the Christmas tree in my empty house and loop my fingers through the warm handle, mesmerized by the twinkling lights reflected in the inky blackness of my cup.

The frenzy is over. All the Christmas presents have been opened and put away. Our guests have come and gone. Up in the loft, the air mattress exhales softly next to a pile of quilts waiting to be washed. The fridge is choked with leftovers and Christmas cookies grow stale on the counter. Five limp stockings hang by the fireplace.

Out in the world, under the rush of highways and the urgency of clocks that never cease, stores are hauling out next year’s calendars and Valentine’s candy.

The message rings loud and clear: Christmas is over. The curtain has closed on the show we’ve been building up to all year long, and there is nothing more to look forward to but the cold emptiness of January.

We’ve barely cracked Jesus out of the Styrofoam and plunked him in the manger on Christmas morning when it is time to pack him up again.

There’s something very backwards about that, I think, and I feel the need to linger here a little longer under the twinkling lights on the carefully-crafted stage, believing with all my heart that Christmas is not the end but the beginning.

All the awful expectation, the groaning under never-ending Advent days, the weariness of waiting for a cure that will not come—is over. He has come.

Finally, I am free. I am free from the empty striving of the holiday season and the vain attempts to produce peace and joy by my doings. Here, in the days after Christmas, I find my rest.

I sit in the midst of beautiful adornment and I think that now, now, all the glory is appropriate because now my rescuer has come. Now, the Son has dawned.

Now we can begin to celebrate, now when most everyone is packing away the ornaments and hauling the tree to the curb.

But oh, I do not want to pack it in now. I want to throw open the curtain, cut the ribbon, and begin here. I want to sit under the lights and let the incarnation in.

Linger.

Dwell.

Worship.

Wonder at the brightest beginning we could ever hope for, the beginning that trumps all other beginnings, the page-turner that leads into a beautiful New Year’s and lovely Valentine’s and the glorious climax of Easter.

This is where the story starts. Christmas day is over, but Christmas—Christ with us!—has just begun.

Micah

When the busyness of the day has ended and the last charging footstep has quieted into the night, I find myself compelled to look in on my children, still and softly breathing, while they sleep.

I have been with them all day. I have been pursued into the very corners of my home, I have served all the needs and all the wants until I have nothing left, so why should I seek them out for one more look, one more glance at the faces I know so well?

Because when the stillness comes, I am able to see my life like a picture. Every detail is captured in a single snapshot and I am able, finally, to pause and consider. I am able to see that my life is beautiful.

Even in the chaos, in rooms littered with Legos and laundry, I am overcome. I stare at the beauty captured by the quiet and I am compelled to worship.

Sometimes it takes the darkness to see.

The light brings the hurry, the motion, the stream of images that cloud my vision like a movie playing out on a big screen. It moves at such a pace, I do not know where to look. I am unable to comprehend it all. I am surrounded by beauty, even overwhelmed by it. But I am rarely overcome because the urgency of this world hurries me out of worship. It keeps my feet in the clay when it’s my knees that should be on the ground.

It is hard enough to slow down and consider the beauty of these days, to find and reflect on the things that keep our hearts soft and our eyes drawn up in worship. For there is mud and mire all around us, but in every day God gives us a glimpse of glory, a rainbow over a muck-brown world or a crumb of manna in the desert.

The trick is to notice.

Every day, God gives us a glimpse of glory

Because it’s easy to notice everything but the beauty. We notice the bills that need to be paid and the hair that needs brushing, the chores that need to be done and the dinners that need to be cooked. We notice which child is wet and which child is sleepy and how the baby is out of diapers.

And all that noticing gets us nowhere because it keeps our eyes fixed to the stuff of earth, to the mud and the dust and the dreariness that we never seem to overcome because we are made of it.

But all around in this earth grow bushes afire with God, their roots sinking down into the same dirt that muddies our kitchen floors and stains the Sunday clothes. Can you see them? Lift up your eyes. Bend your knees.

When we begin to notice—to see—the flaming beauty of these days, we are changed. It’s hard to be concerned about that pebble in your shoe when you’re standing on holy ground. But it is a joy to stand in the mud when there’s a rainbow overhead.

Here in our homes, children of Abraham, children of God, we are standing on holy ground. We are raising eternity. We are impacting forever. We are reflecting in actions and words the very image of God. In our daily work and daily bread we find shadows and pictures of glory, simple still-life portraits of the hand of God.

Can you see them?

This series is about taking the time to see, really see, the beauty in the everyday moments of life and motherhood. It is about finding that little piece of holy ground in the middle of the mess and fixing our knees to it.

You can expect, over the next 100 days, to hopscotch across the holy ground with me, to find joy and delight in the beauty of the every day, and to pause there to worship. My hope and prayer is that you will respond, first to God and then to me, with snapshots of your own.

Come mothers and fathers, come friends, and notice with me. Take off your shoes, forget about the blisters, and delight in these days.

They are beautiful.

Paul