Wild Worship

Apparently the beach was ruined, no longer deserving of its Blue Flag status. The west coast of Ireland is dented with myriads of beautiful beaches and this particular one lies at the foot of Croagh Patrick in Co Mayo. A storm had thrown tonnes of stones, rocks and pebbles up into large mounds along the sand, the dunes were steep faced, uprooted fence posts lying around like driftwood, and the white painted lines of a car park buried under all the debris. The wild Atlantic had violently smashed wave after wave onto the land and altered it beyond recognition.

A cold wind froze faces and whipped sea froth onto the sand. Welly boots filled with water as an unexpected wave hit the paddlers, making them scream with shock. The wintry sun shone on the snow dusted slopes of the mountain behind us, the tiny pilgrim’s chapel visible at the peak where perhaps someone was lighting a candle and praying at the same moment I lifted my face to the wide open sky and felt my heart fill with what can surely only be called worship.

No praise band, no worship leader, no words projected on screens, no words at all for that matter just a deep, spontaneous sense of joy and gratitude that rose up and flowed outwards to the God I knew was beyond and yet beside me. I imagined Jesus walking with me at that moment. Turning to him with a grin on my face, he would smile right back and know just what I meant when I simply said, thank you.

If ever I naturally lift my hands up in prayer and praise without a trace of self-consciousness, it won’t be in a church building and it won’t be in an ordered worship service, it will more likely be out here in the wide open spaces where sky meets land and sea, where the supreme power and beauty of nature declare God’s sovereignty and where raw honesty of self can pour out unhindered.

With all the tarmac, sign posts, fencing and man-made facilities gone, the beach is stark and wild. It’s a reminder that human beings may impose themselves on a place but what we build so confidently and with such self-assurance can be swept away in a moment. It’s a picture of a landscape submitting to its true master and being stripped back to an elemental state.

Standing out on the beach of our own interior landscape, there is nothing between us and God that cannot be swept away by the immense waves of his love which dramatically change the terrain. It is a place where everything is exposed, we are simply ourselves and we can experience the exhilaration of worship. Here, the moments may be fleeting but some day, forever on the beaches of eternity, our worship will be wild and free as it was always meant to be.

“It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God.
Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth.
That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for:
those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship.
God is sheer being itself—Spirit.
Those who worship him must do it out of their very being,
their spirits,
their true selves,
in adoration.”

John 4:23-24 Msg