🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌

We’re in week three of school holidays, and it feels like my skin is buzzing with over-stimulation and high needs. I’ve been more irritable, often setting off a chain reaction with my son who shares my snap-crackle-pop nervous system. My world shrunk as my thoughts looped on my own struggles. This isn’t my first rodeo. I’m painfully prone to self-rumination.

I don’t think it’s just me. The Israelites sung “songs of ascents” to turn their minds from hardship to hope on the arduous journeys to Jerusalem. They automated worship before habit stacking was cool, so they didn’t need to scramble for words when the going got tough.

Our brains operate from the Default Mode Network when we think about ourselves. Research shows anxiety ignites when we get stuck there. But, just as the Israelites practiced long ago, something shifts when we “lift our eyes up”. Our Default Mode Network goes offline when we are looking up and outside of ourselves to allow our Task-Positive Network to take the wheel.

We use our Default Mode Network to meditate on God’s Word and intimately commune with him. We see the bigger picture when also activate our Task-Positive Network to notice where God’s moving, worship, serve others.

We don’t have to write the script. We just have to open the Word.

“I lift my eyes toward the mountains.

Where will my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord,

the Maker of heaven and earth…

The Lord will protect you from all harm;

He will protect your life.

The Lord will protect your coming and going

Both now and forevermore.”

(Psalm 121)

Listen to Mack Brock’s “I Lift My Eyes”.