Can black ink on a page knock the breath out of you?
Maybe it’s just MY books that have this power.
Regardless, my latest “can’t breathe, must find water, I’m a wretched human being” episode came after reading this sentence from a book called The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Butterfield.
“Were these gifts or idols, I wondered? With a chill, I knew that if they were idols, then God would, in his love and mercy, destroy them and remove them from me.”
It doesn’t seem terrible, does it? But, the moment I read it, my mind immediately ordered all the things I view as gifts in my life, (kids, family, home, etc.) and in spreadsheet fashion neatly labeled them all, “IDOL.” I repeat: labeled them ALL, “IDOL.”
I tried to back up and make my mind stop it, but it wouldn’t. It was like God was at the keyboard typing the letters I-D-O-L over and over again next to the things I loved most in life.
And this wasn’t the worst part. It was the idea that God loved me too much to let me keep worshiping in the wrong direction that made me shiver. He would remove my idols whether I was ready to have them removed or not. Could I bear the thought of that?
No.
Micah 5:13: I will destroy your idols and your sacred stones from among you; you will no longer bow down to the work of your hands.
Sometimes, worship can be of God in a sanctuary with candles and singing. Sometimes it can be of God in work or play. But, for me, it had leaked out and become something for my children and their every move, something for my food and its perfect taste, something for my home and its appearance to the world, something for so many things that weren’t God.
And so I have set out to dismantle my own idols. I chose to do this so that when God’s hand shakes them down, I will be ready, and they won’t have to fall so very far and so very hard.
I started easy. (Or so I thought.) I started with food.
For Lent, I took meat, bread, sweetener, and dairy out of my diet.
This is every food group that I eat to my body’s detriment. These are the things that have taken priority over my health and the body that God had given me in which to live.
I’m on day 27.
It’s awful.
Why am I telling you all of this?
I guess I know that the topic of worship can seem like a boring, irrelevant topic in our world today. But, because of this journey I’m on to discover singular worship of the God I trust with my life, I wanted to share with you that worship can be life altering.
And the consequence of doing it in the wrong direction…well, I’ll have to let you know how that turns out.
Kim and Bryant Miller are collaborators on life and ministry. Married in 2006, they are both clergy in the United Methodist Church, both educated at Asbury Theological Seminary, and both devoted to a life in ministry spent side-by-side. Currently, they serve a local church in Northwest Ohio, have a two-year old named Max and a baby girl on the way. Their personalities are almost entirely opposite each other, which makes their conversations very interesting and their blogging collaborations a conglomeration of hard-line logic and flighty creativity. While the words on the page may be Kim's doing, the voice sitting across from her on the couch is weaved through each project.