We naturally greet these moments with gratitude. But more than that, we respond with adoration.

Both involve discipline and ritual. Both require that we cease relying on our own effort and activity and lean on God for his sufficiency.

The body of Christ is made of all kinds of people, some of whom I find obnoxious, arrogant, self-righteous, or misguided (charges, I’m sure, others have rightly applied to me).

While these approaches may form us as alternative consumers, they do not necessarily form us as worshipers.

Christians are people who wait. We live in liminal time, in the already and not yet. Christ has come, and he will come again. We dwell in the meantime. We wait.

I need a human voice telling me, week in and week out, that they’re lies. I need to hear from someone who knows me that there is grace enough for me, that Christ’s work is on my behalf, even as I’m on my knees confessing that I’ve blown it again this week.

Religion in our time has been captured by a tourist mindset. . . . We go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new experience and so somehow to expand our otherwise humdrum life.”

We prepare. We practice waiting.

Ironically, greed and consumerism dull our delight. The more we indulge, the less pleasure we find. We are hedonistic cynics and gluttonous stoics. In our consumerist society we spend endless energy and money seeking pleasure, but we are never sated.