🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌

I've started compiling a collection of the Friday Calls to Worship for publishing. I never intended for a 300-word message to go beyond a WhatsApp to a few friends. It's been surprisingly encouraging to dip into the archives, walking week by week through a pandemic with a younger version of me, one who didn't yet know she was also in the thick of special needs parenting.

It all started because I spent an enormous amount of time lying next to my toddler between 2019 -2022. I had to wait for him to be in a deep sleep and tiptoe out of his room. His days started at 4:00 am, and he was full throttle. I didn't have anything left in the tank by bedtime, and there was still a marriage and another child to show up for "after hours".

Eventually, I turned the tables on those maddening hours of waiting in the darkness. I put in headphones and turned on worship music as soon as stories and goodnight kisses were done. Hours of weary, anxious waiting turned into hours of worship. I heard new songs. I heard God speak. And I wanted to tell my friends about it. So I started the Friday Call to Worship.

A series of sometimes hope-filled and sometimes hope-seeking WhatsApp messages have become a memoir of sorts. A weekly testimony of finding God in the middle of messy life and choosing to worship anyway when I couldn't. Week by week, the choice to write it down and to worship have shaped me. They have written eternity in my heart and mind where life could have written weariness and lament. The calls to worship aren't big booms and miracle stories. They are a sinful and often tired woman grasping for Jesus and declaring His Name in it all.

You and me. We're the same. We are shaped by the world or by our worship. So today, we will worship.

Listen to Abide by Aaron Williams.