At break of day, as heavenward
Henry Wordsworth Longfellow
the pious monks of St. Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer
a voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!
“Ascent” most aptly describes the direction of our spirituality in making our way to God each day. If we are ennobled and inspired to be like Christ, then we should be moving upward to the Father – not remaining stationary to our detriment.
We are participators, not spectators. Our way of life and especially our worship, both personal and communal, needs to ascend with fervor just as it did with the Jewish pilgrims who sang and prayed the “Songs of Ascent” (Psalms 120-134) on their way up to Mount Zion.
Our relationship with the Lord requires discipline and consistency to make it to the summit. We need to be on the move. I don’t think “slogging to Mount Zion” is what the Lord has in mind.
We should be dissatisfied with conventional Christian living. We were built for the higher places; we were meant to ascend to unimaginable heights. Encounter happens on Mount Carmel, Mount Sinai and even on Calvary’s mount.
If Zacchaeus would climb a tree to see Jesus, how much more should we be driven to deeper, more meaningful times in prayer and adoration? Every day our cry should be: “I will see Jesus!” How sad it will be for some believers to reach the end of their lives and say, like Jacob, “Surely the Lord was in this place (at home, in church or in a prayer meeting) and I did not know it!” (Genesis 28:16) But how wonderful it would be for those who can say with Jacob the very next verse:
“How awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
Genesis 28:17
We need to cultivate an awareness of God’s presence.
Think of it: spread out before us spiritually, well beyond our normal boundaries, is a banquet table to which we are invited to sit with the Lamb of God. Imagine God with us at table together! It is a feast for those who hunger and thirst to be changed into Christ’s image. Every day we are invited to join Him through prayer. That is, to be in His holy presence and to be in awe of Him. Imagine us being mere candles in the face of a full sun! I heard it put this way once: we are invited to “an eternal and uproarious banquet.”
In some small way, our prayer times and our communal worship reflect this magnificent encounter. The words of Mary, Mother of Jesus, come quickly to mind: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!” How can we leave His divine presence and not be “magnifiers”?
Our life is drawn to God away from the dust of the earth. Our passion and ardor are visible. Our Godliness is manifested in profuse worship. As Francis Chan has said, “Isn’t it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate?”
It is evident that Christ has visited His people. We are experiencing the very presence of God in the very core of our souls. So, we dwell and do not dash. We quiet ourselves and retreat from the wordy world around us so that “the sought for Lord” is found:
And so I find it well to come
John Greenleaf Whittier
For deeper rest to this still room
For here the habit of the soul
Feels less the outer world’s control
And from the silence multiplied
By these still forms on either side,
The world that time and sense have known
Falls off and leaves us God alone.
Prayer, in all its forms, from quiet meditation to festal shouts, is not laborious; it is a blessed communion with Almighty God Who engages us beyond our flesh and beckons us to rise to meet Him. Climbing is our vocation. We will claw every inch of the way to get into the heart of God. Ascending will require constancy in the struggle against the gravity of our egos and inner distractions.
Worship is the pivotal action that shifts us from earth to heaven. We are strengthened by the Holy Spirit in our effort to find Christ. He makes us hunger and thirst for Him to be in His presence. Worship is our access to eternity.
Top image credit: Illustration of Christians worshiping together, image created with digital paintbrush AI enhanced artwork from © Artstyles.com. Used with permission.