Art to Heart Call to Worship

Willem Buytewech: Dignified Couples Courting

©2002 by Jeff Dugan

Here we see a pair of fashionable young 17^th century Dutch couples playing a courtship game.  As the young man on the left looks away, the woman next to him asks him to guess which hand holds the rose.  His choice will supposedly indicate with which of the women his affections lie.  But he doesn’t realize that she’s crossing her arms.  So whether he chooses “left” or “right,” she’s the one who really controls the outcome.

Many people seem to have the idea that our eternal souls are involved in a similar con game.  Surely God is a God of love and compassion.  And surely He is able to accomplish whatever He desires.  So we assume that He will surely have mercy on us even if we play fast and loose with our relationship with Him.

But the scriptures deny this foolish hope of ours.  May God help us not to approach worship like a fickle teenage infatuation, but like what it truly is; a unique, desperately crucial chance to love Him with all the power and passion we have.  May we cling to Him desperately today in the certainty that despite God’s relentless pursuit of us, it is a love that we can lose if we take it for granted.