Weekly e-news September 6, 2019
Hey, everyone!
Hope you’re having an awesome day! It’s gonna be a warmish weekend, weatherly speaking!
Hope it’s not too sweaty and sticky for a church I saw that is planning to worship outside this Sunday…
I was on my way to my fellers up at Morgan County Correctional on Tuesday and I passed a little Baptist church with one of those church signs that said…
“Join us this Sunday for worship service at Frozen Head State Park”
Which made me wonder…
“Frozen Head?! Why do they call it ‘Frozen Head’?”
Lots of state parks have goofy and/or quirky names!
I was trying to guess why a state park in Camdenton, MO is called, “Ha Ha Tonka State Park” (I guessed wrong on that one! It’s a Cherokee name…)
Every wonder why they call it, “Big Bone Lick State Park” in Union, KY? (I got that one wrong, too! It’s about an old salt lick where a Mastodon skeleton was dug up!)
In Stock Port, OH you can spend the day at “Big Bottom State Park” (It has to do with lots of fertile bottom farm land…I guessed that one right!)
So…
“Frozen Head” is about a mountain that gets frosty in the fall…(And has nothing to do with the ghost stories they tell kids in Petros…)
So then I wondered…
“They’re having ‘services’ there…Why do they call what we do on Sunday a worship ‘service’?”
Of course, there’s always a load of serving going on!
Kids are growing…
coffee’s brewing…
folks are sharing Scriptures…
doors swing open…
music’s filling the air…
even the parking lot cones are waiting for you…
All because servants-at-heart is have been doing what they love to do!
But I looked it up, anyway…
“Wow! It comes from ‘Old French’…’servise’…from Latin before that…’servitium’…’First used in 1100 A.D.’ (That’s an old word!)…’a celebration of public worship’ from ‘an act of homage or worship’…’offered by a servant/slave of God’…’Mass, church ceremony…”
“So, that’s it!”
They call Sunday worship a “service” because…like the ancient priests in the Temple of old…you’re offering songs and praise to God as a service to Him!
That makes sense…
Except…
Psalm 50 says…
He doesn’t need it! I’m not really giving Him anything!
“The Mighty One, God, the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to where it sets…
(About all the sacrifices and service they brought Him)…
“I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine!
And the cattle on a thousand hills!
I know every bird in the mountains, and the insects in the fields are mine.
If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it!” (Psalm 50:1,9-12)
He didn’t need their sacrifices! (Tho’ He asked for them!)
He doesn’t need our singing, worship, and praise! (Tho’ He asks for them!)
I LOVE praising God!! Singing to Him!!
But He doesn’t need our encouragement!!
We need His!!
And how do we get encouragement for all we have to face every difficult week?
By praising Him, of course!
By singing to Him!
And by remembering, from all the words we sing…
that…
“I am a child of the Maker of stars…”
“He cherishes,treasures me…gave life and blood!”
“He is my Friend!”
and
“I am His Belooooooved!!”
Now I’m ready for whatever’s ahead!!
He asks for our praise, not because He needs to hear it (tho’ He loves it!) but because we need to do it!!
Praising Him…worshiping Him is the most self-serving serving we do!!
See Sunday at worship service!
If you come with a frozen head, you’ll leave with a warm heart!!