Minister: Lift up your hearts!
Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord!
God of ultimate wisdom, God of infinite, cascading wisdom, we worship You through the incarnation of that wisdom, our Lord Jesus.
We give glory to You, for the earth is full of Your glory. We render thanks to You, because the earth has been made fruitful at Your command. We gather to sing praises to You, because You have redeemed us, despite our blind stupidity, and have given to us the mind of Christ. We know that we deserve absolutely none of it, and we lift it all back to You.
We confess that apart from Your sovereign intervention in our lives, each of us here would be outside Your Church, staring spitefully at her, and maliciously insulting Your grace. We confess that nothing separates us from our most petty adversaries but Your kindness to us in Jesus Christ. There, but for Your grace, we would also be, and so we praise the inscrutable nature of that grace.
As we consider where we could easily have been, we are filled with gratitude. But as we praise and honor You, we remember that the one response that is absolutely forbidden by our worship of You is the response of pride. Help us now to honor and worship You, and banish all arrogance and pride.
And so, gracious Father, we worship You now through Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end, amen
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