difference

Your thoughts please: this morning in Meeting for Worship (the Quaker service), we again held the silence for the entire time. I am noticing a difference between Meeting for Worship and traditional church services. It seems to me that at Meeting this morning, I was being worship, rather than doing worship. For in my present and my silence, in my anxiety and hopes, I was being worship. There was no action other than my presence. I didn't have to sing or track along with a sermon, or do any actions. The words of the song that goes: "here I am to worship, here I am to bow down, here I am to say that you're my God" where running through my head. That all seems to action oriented, so dependent on doing particular things.

When the actions, words, song - all that are stripped away, the thing left is presence. A friend passed on a quote to me this week that has really made sense - "God's first language is silence". For me, in that silence, with the proscribed actions removed, I can be worship.

Do you see a difference?