"Celebrate, Celebrate"

Celebration is an important part of our lives.  If you are like me, you celebrated the Christmas Holidays and the beginning of a New Year.  I was so enthralled in celebrating the New Year with four wild grandkids, that I went to bed way before the ball dropped in Times Square faintly hearing some fireworks exploding in the neighborhood.  Being from rural red-neck Alabama those sounds may have been the illegal discharging of firearms by my neighbors. I decided long ago not to be outdoors to see the fireworks in case it was falling lead.  I wanted to celebrate life with four wild children on New Year’s Day.

According to an article that I read years ago, there are numerous fatalities from celebrating by shooting at the stars during times of celebration.  There is a right and wrong way to celebrate.  Random firing in the air for celebration can cause a lifetime of regret. 

My daughter had a volleyball teammate whose brother did jail time for shooting in the sky during a Halloween haunted hayride.  When the 22-caliber bullet ricocheted hitting a small girl in the neck.

The shooting of fireworks is extremely dangerous.  In high school I had a classmate that returned from the Christmas Holidays missing his middle finger from throwing a “cherry bomb” firecracker.  My daughter also bounced a bottle rocket off her cousin’s granddad’s head in celebrating New Year’s.

We do a lot of celebrating.  We celebrate birthdays, holidays, weddings, anniversaries, victories, achievements, grand openings, graduations, retirements, and funerals.  We give cards, flowers, money, watches, certificates, pins, and plaques.  But, how many times do we celebrate God in worship.

It would behoove the church to celebrate the blessings of God rather than the church’s tendency to murmur and gripe.  For some reason churches forget the great things God has done and dwell on things that God has not done or that we think He should have done.  All one must do is see how quickly the Hebrews started complaining when they exited Egypt.  I like to paraphrase like this, “Where two or more Baptist are gathered there will be murmuring and fussing.

Celebrations have two extremes.  I remember reading an editorial in the Clanton Advertiser many years ago of an irate mom concerning here child’s graduation from kindergarten. According to the irate mom, there was not enough celebration because the principal and teachers were so thoughtless of the great achievements of little ones graduating the vicious and demanding academia of kindergarten.  She wanted caps, gowns, and pomp and circumstance, along with a boring speech, REALLY!  Let the kids have cake and ice cream and be thankful they will be entering the academia of the first grade.  Years later, I attended my grandson’s kindergarten graduation and I realized it was more for the parents, not the kids, as the teachers and aides pushed and commanded the children to act like the graduating class of Harvard Law School. 

After the extraction of last tidbit of information drilled into the child’s head, teachers and aides cut them loose to be kindergartners.  They ran and were excited about the cake, ice cream, potato chips, and punch and could not wait to get out of the caps and gowns.  Now that was a celebration. 

Then there is the extreme celebration and often taunting of the athlete who gets a penalty of excessive celebration upon a great achievement of running a touchdown all by himself.  Last time I played; I remember that ten other teammates helped the overly zealous running back score.  If we celebrated, we had to do pushups.

What about celebration on the Lord’s Day?  Is our role the one of the irate mother who thinks there should be more or are we the zealot who fellow parishioners want to throw the penalty flag?

Do we know how to celebrate God?  Is a worldly celebration more important than one for God?  How many editorials do the local newspapers write for churches celebrating or lack of, God at worship?  Is not the work of God more powerful than anything man has done?  Are we afraid to worship?  Do we really understand why we gather on Sundays?  Do we know how to worship?  Are we following tradition, or do we follow the examples of God’s Word? 

In Psalm 22 David wrote a mournful psalm that Jesus quoted while own the cross.  In Psalm 23 David wrote of the gentle shepherd that would help in times of need. In Psalm 24, David knew how to celebrate God’s majestic and triumphant presence.  The Ark of the Covenant had been returned to Jerusalem.  The people were ready to celebrate the presence of God.  David realized that when the heart is prepared, the desire to worship God becomes an integral part of our lives providing direction and focus.

Our moments together at worship are a time of celebration.  In our getting and giving, in our saving and spending, we remember that all belongs to God.  Seduction by the genius of Madison Avenue marketing and advertising distorts celebration by taunting us with pleasure from material wealth. 

God created it all and He is redeeming it all.  Celebrating God is recognizing His redemption.  We celebrate life because Christ lives.  Celebration is conditional.  Celebrating is acknowledging that everything is God’s.  He created us to worship, He redeemed us to worship, and He instructed us to worship. 

There are moral qualifications for worship.  We come with blameless conduct (clean hands), we do right with right motive (pure heart), we are to be faithful to God and to neighbor, and we are to be truthful in dealings.

The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.  For He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.  Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place?  He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully (Psalm 24:1-4 KJV).

Write today’s worries in the sand.  Chisel yesterday’s victories in stone – Max Lucado