Thank God for His Church!

"I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.' Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem" (122:1). My feet have been standing there too, as well as our family's on both sides. Some are in and out for various reasons, but the pattern is established and I am glad to this very morning that once again I am going to the house of the Lord.

What would my life have been--indeed what would it be even now--apart from God's house? Those who disregard that house only end up diminishing themselves. The sadness is not that they rail against it so much--though some do that as well--but that they see it somehow as irrelevant. The Lord's day is no longer his. It has become theirs--to sleep in, lolly gag around the house, go shopping, or whatever else.

When asked why he was always going to church one of our forebears said simply, "Because I'm afraid of what I might miss if I don't!" One could do without some of church life, of course, especially when clergy or lay folk try to superintend it as if it were theirs to rule. But that would be to miss the fact that the church is the house of the Lord, a place he inhabits by his grace--where his Word is proclaimed, however feebly at times, and the blessed sacraments shared. Those who come to it with the same gladness of heart as the psalmist seldom leave without feeling blessed.

Thus it has been for me since childhood. So may it continue to be for me and mine--and you and yours--until the Lord himself comes in person to gather the faithful and establish his kingdom on earth.