I was moved by the beauty of Psalm 126 this morning.  Most encouraging to me were verses 5 and 6:

 Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!  He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

What is immediately evident is that joy can come through seasons of sorrows.  Deprivations spawn appreciation for the tiniest blessings.  Our trials and struggles do indeed refine our faith and they intensify our awareness of the goodness of God in contrast.  Coming out of the frigid cold into a cozy warm room enhances our appreciation of the blessedness of the warmth.  Finishing a severe deprivation of water enhances our contentment in a cool drink of water.  The illustrations abound because the principle is true.  Each trial is preparation of our senses to receive greater joy.  Life on earth in this world is preparation for the final blessedness we will one day enjoy.  Be encouraged in your trial today and in the struggles of life, that none of it is in vain, because our God is sovereign and good.

I was moved by a passage of Scripture in my daily reading today found in 2 Kings 16:10-20.  There we learn of Ahaz, the ungodly idolatrous King of Judah.  Ahaz was enamored by the altar in Damascus and asked his priest, Uriah, to copy what he saw there in the Temple of the Lord, in Jerusalem.  So, a syncretistic Ahaz altered the Temple that God designed and ordered meticulously.  All of this gives us a glimpse of the abomination of false worship and idolatry.  But it also gives us a tremendous warning against a casual approach to church worship structures.

 10 When King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, he saw the altar that was at Damascus. And King Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest a model of the altar, and its pattern, exact in all its details. 11 And Uriah the priest built the altar; in accordance with all that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus, so Uriah the priest made it, before King Ahaz arrived from Damascus. 12 And when the king came from Damascus, the king viewed the altar. Then the king drew near to the altar and went up on it 13 and burned his burnt offering and his grain offering and poured his drink offering and threw the blood of his peace offerings on the altar. 14 And the bronze altar that was before the LORD he removed from the front of the house, from the place between his altar and the house of the LORD, and put it on the north side of his altar. 15 And King Ahaz commanded Uriah the priest, saying, “On the great altar burn the morning burnt offering and the evening grain offering and the king’s burnt offering and his grain offering, with the burnt offering of all the people of the land, and their grain offering and their drink offering. And throw on it all the blood of the burnt offering and all the blood of the sacrifice, but the bronze altar shall be for me to inquire by.” 16 Uriah the priest did all this, as King Ahaz commanded. 17 And King Ahaz cut off the frames of the stands and removed the basin from them, and he took down the sea from off the bronze oxen that were under it and put it on a stone pedestal. 18 And the covered way for the Sabbath that had been built inside the house and the outer entrance for the king he caused to go around the house of the LORD, because of the king of Assyria. 19 Now the rest of the acts of Ahaz that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? 20 And Ahaz slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David, and Hezekiah his son reigned in his place.

How has God designed worship structures for the church today?  What is required in worship?  What is prohibited?  These are important questions of the day.  The Reformers often referred to two or three essential marks of a true or pure church: 1) Right preaching of the Word of God, 2) Right administration of the ordinances, and sometimes a third, 3) Right practice of church discipline.  It appears in our day that all three of these can easily be corrupted in order to accommodate the culture or increase interest and mitigate the offense of the Gospel.  We ought to beware of altering God ordained structures of worship.