Nine months.  Only nine months and our little corner of the world becomes and international hotspot, an epicenter in the path of totality.   At 1:30 pm on April 8, 2024 we will experience a total solar eclipse.  Friends old and new will flock to central Arkansas to get a front row seat.   Are you ready?

The last total solar eclipse visible to Norte Americanos was in August 2017.   Our family traveled to St. Louis and navigated many adversities for 3 minutes of celestial glory.   A total solar eclipse is not to be missed.  As it begins colors in the landscape become more vibrant, contrasts sharper.  Shadows cast through leafy trees cover the ground with hundreds of tiny crescent shaped images of the advancing eclipse.  

At the height of the eclipse, temperatures drop and birds fall silent.   It is eerie but glorious.  And for a brief moment you can take off your ISO 12312-2  approved eclipse glasses, put down your pin-hole projector, and behold the heavenly declaration of God’s glory.  The God in whom there is never a “shadow of turning,” whom nothing can eclipse.  

Our trip to view the eclipse of 2017 included a brief camping stop at Crowley’s Ridge State Park.  Every hotel along our trek had no vacancy.  I could not believe we were able to secure a spot at the park’s campground.    But I soon discovered why.   Crowley’s Ridge, like all our Arkansas State Parks, is a beautiful place in the world and a lovely place to camp.  But, and I repeat, NEVER in August.   Surrounded by northeast Arkansas rice fields, its vibrant, thriving mosquito culture rivals the ancient plague of gnats.   We had only one tent.  The manly men planned to sleep in hammocks.  It was the sleep of the undead.   The perpetual hum of the mosquitoes was at once torturous yet glorious.  

Millions of mosquitoes were gathered in joyful assembly for their nightly ritual of feeding and singing together.  The hum of any one was almost imperceptible, but together their buzzing was pervasive, inescapable.   In the hours of suffering, I recalled what was written of Scottish Praying Societies whose collective prayers on the Friday night of each Communion Season sounded to one Scottish traveler like the buzzing of bees throughout the countryside.  

The sound of saints in joyful assembly should always be like this.   One of my pastoral delights is to hear this hum before and after worship on the Lord’s Day. And to hear the tiny voices of the smallest children singing the Doxology and joining in with the Lord’s Prayer.  How joyfully, thankfully, excitedly do we gather for worship? 

The rest God gives on the Day of Rest should never be anesthetic or palliative.  It should energize our minds, our bodies, our souls, our aspirations, our hopes, and our assurance.  God ordained worship to draw us powerfully into His glorious triune life.   A mentor once defined worship as “work of the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ to the glory of God the Father.”  Simple, yet profound.

As God prepares his people Israel to move from life as a fellowship of sufferings in Egypt to a communion of the saints in a land of Promise, he gives them, through Moses, a blueprint for life-together in covenant community.  This Book of the Covenant, found in Exodus 21-24 begins and ends with instructions regarding worship.   As the blueprint concludes in Exodus 23, the Lord bookends practical instruction about how to love and live with others with our worship. 

For the covenant child, our loving and living with others is never mutually exclusive of our loving and living with the Lord, our God.   Without worship, the Christian life is hollow, wraithlike, vaporous; a vanities of vanities.  God intends worship that is joyful, thankful, redemptive, and restful not dull, drab, or tedious. 

A church billboard invites attenders to “Expect and Experience!”   And some preachers report, “the Lord showed up and showed out today.”  While these statements reflect some problems, in both orthodoxy and orthopraxy, the reminder to come expectantly to worship is needful.   What do you expect?  How eager are you for the Lord’s Day?  Of giving, including our worship, Jesus taught.

“Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Luke 6:37-39

Pressed down, shaken together, running over, falling into your lap and down to the hem of your robe.   This is the kind of joy, grace, peace, and rest the Lord delights to give as the communion of the saints takes visible form in public worship on the Lord’s Day.   Are you ready?  

Join us as we examine Exodus 23:10-19 and consider the blessings God intends for the worship of the gathered people of God.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.