"God in Heaven, let me really feel my nothingness, not in order to despair over it, but in order to feel the more powerfully the greatness of Thy goodness" S. Kierkegaard.
Increasingly this is becoming one of my most common prayers. When I think for more than a few minutes about the greatness and goodness of the God that I allegedly worship, my response is more often than not found in silence and wonder.
I don't want to in any way discount the wonderful richness that can be found in words of songs and rousing music or the power of a passionate sermon, or the beautiful words of a prayer. I have found them all incredibly important to my faith and to my worship of God. But of late, I struggle to worship any further than in stillness, aware of my own nothingness and God's supremacy. It is difficult to know what to say at times.
I sometimes wonder if we have moulded Christianity into something which fits around our own desire to find purpose in life, our desire to be fulfilled and accepted by God, to have a 'personal saviour'. We rarely embrace the concept of nothingness into our Churches or society . Perhaps the antidote to the self obsessed culture we find ourself in is not to sell Jesus as just another product which can satisfy, a bigger better version of Starbucks or Apple, but rather as the complete antitheses of consumerism.
It is in nothingness that we discover the richness and the profundity of God. Perhaps if we dared to shut up more often, to be silent instead of speaking, to be aware of our own nothingness in the Universe that we might truly learn something of what it means to worship, and maybe something of what it means to live.
"Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing." Philippians 2:5-7
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