The Phil Files

“Worship is transcendent wonder.” (Thomas Carlyle)*

“One minor change to the oder of worship for Sunday.” (A friend talking about an upcoming worship gathering.)

From the sublime to the ridiculous?

Is this a misspell or a Freudian slip?

Neither: but maybe it’s a reminder that worship is not primarily about us, but about God and bringing others to appreciate and love Him. And this kind of worship is not just about what happens at worship gatherings, but it involves all of life.

“Our offering to God is this: We are the sweet smell of Christ among people who are being saved and among people who are being lost.” (Paul in 2 Corinthians 2:15 NRS)

In another place, he said it this way:

Everything you say and everything you do should all be done for Jesus your Lord. And in all you do, give thanks to God the Father through Jesus. (Colossians 3:17 NRS)

So how is your worship “oder”?

Notes:
*From Heartlight.org, Quotemeal

The wise one said it powerfully and clearly:

Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God (Proverbs 14:31 TNIV).

A photo from a recent trip to Africa called to mind this passage. The color, shadowing, and sunlight called me to this message. But this image is more than that for me. I can still remember the smell of that moment … the smell of the fish being cleaned about fifteen feet to the left of this picture, the smell of the morning cooking smoke still hanging in the air, the smell of human waste barely detectable in the breeze, and the aroma of baby spit up smelling like moldy soy. I also remember the emotional smells: a faint aroma of hope celebrating the intervention of Compassion into the lives of a twenty-two year old married HIV positive woman of with two young children and the clean, prepared, and loving tenderness of the project worker who shared scripture and love, as well as her expertise on health and nutrition, with this family a world away from where I live.

Now if I can just live to honor God in this … I so want to be a person of honor, who honors, the LORD who has been so gracious with me, by being a real, tangible, fragrantly pleasing aroma of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:15). To bet a part of culture change, as Randy’s Watercooler Wednesday suggests, I’ve got to keep all the odors as images in my heart and then act personally.

While I like the Scripture graphic (aka PowerPoint background) with the text, of the three related images, I like the one without any text or title most of all. All three — the Bible text, the title, and the plain image — can be downloaded free from Heartlight.org. Check on the latest images, or use the search for color, Bible reference, or key theme. Here’s a small version of the real image: