Key Bible Verse: A single day in your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else (Psalm 84:10)! Bonus Reading: Psalm 84:1-4, 10-12

I am in my early fifties and am celebrating the fact that I've been a part of the church by virtue of personal union with Christ for 40 years. Even with a sizeable vocabulary at my disposal, I can't adequately describe all that the church means to me.

When I was a youngster, we lived eight long city blocks from the Trinity Baptist Church in the Bronx, New York. For many of those years, the only way for us to get to the church building was to walk. In the winter that wasn't fun. But I made the trek gladly, for I loved going to worship. The Jackson family, with their ten children and two parents, lived in the same apartment building as our family. We would often look like a small mob as we all walked to church. Going to corporate worship was the highlight of my week. It still is.

Being a called out people—the literal meaning of the Greek word for church—calls us from self-centeredness to union with Christ. It calls us from avarice and materialism to service and sacrifice.

In fact the church does what the hymn writer John Fawcett celebrates: it binds our hearts together in Christian love.

—Richard Allen Farmer in How Sweet the Sound

My Response: Is corporate worship a highlight of my week? Have I bonded with my fellow worshipers?

Thought to Apply: Every person needs three homes: a family home, a heavenly home, and a church home.—BILLY GRAHAM (evangelist)

Adapted from How Sweet the Sound (InterVarsity, 2003) by permission.

Prayer for the Week

Father, Your Son gave His life for the church. Teach me, as His follower, to care deeply about it too.

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