Monday, June 2, 2008

Worship on the Buffalo

Yesterday we met 3 other families at Wild Bill’s Outfitters south of Yellville to get all our canoe gear for a day on the river… the Harrimans, the Lloyds, the Shipmans and us…

We were floating the 9 mile route from Dillard’s Bridge to Rush, and about 2 miles in, we stopped at a gravel bar and sat on the shore, facing these thousand-year-old majestic bluffs….

And we worshipped.

There was no duty roster, there was no order of worship, there were no ushers (OK, my Cassie did pass the communion around to everyone )…

Our life jackets served as pews as we sang praises to the very One who used His pinkie to cut this trough where the Buffalo meanders through the Ozark hills.

The songs raised by our little 17-person choir echoed off the cliffs as people floated by… a couple even stopped and worshipped with us for a while.

And it was beautiful!

Our audience was the same as the One to whom our brothers and sisters at Downtown and Riverside were singing that morning, and we missed being with them… but there is something very very pure indeed about worshipping the very One who hand-crafted every piece of river gravel under your feet and carved out every crevice in the bluff hanging over your head…

God inspired the Bible writers to pen a lot of words about a lot of subjects… perhaps the reason there is so scant little said about ‘worship assembly’ is because He didn’t want all our STUFF (buildings, preachers, budgets, parking lots, etc) to get between us and Him.

I wish every worshipper would take the opportunity to do what we did yesterday… at least every once in a while…

It may not be very practical to worship out ‘in His creation’ all the time…. But on the other hand, who ever said worshipping the Living God was supposed to be practical??!?!?!

Blessings!

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