This past Christmas Amy was given a present from my parents, the Gungor live album called “Creation Liturgy.” This album has quickly become one of my favorite albums to listen and it is largely how it finishes. The last song is titled, “The Doxology.” For those of you that are not familiar with the lyrics I have provided them below:
Praise God from whom all blessings
Praise Him, all creatures here below
Praise Him above the Heavenly host
Praise Father, Son and Holy GhostAmen, Amen, Amen, Amen.
Gungor leads a congregation in singing this song a cappella and it is a beautiful thing to hear. At the end of the song Michael Gungor says something.
“Grace and Peace be with you.”
If you are a part of a church this phrase probably doesn’t shock you or even sound weird to you, but I pray that we truly recognize what this means. We live in a world that is down right obsessed with ourselves, i mean narcissistic doesn’t even begin to cover how obsessed we can be, especially in our part of the world, the United States of America.
We have many things, so much so that we are obsessed with things.
What this means is that saying Grace and Peace be with you is a completely subversive countercultural thing. I think we as the Church can get to the point that we say things some many times that it starts to just repeat in our minds and yet sometimes I feel that we really don’t hear it.
We listen to it, but we don’t hear it.
So, I pray that as we live our lives that the words we say would be honoring God and worshipping God at all times. So, I’ll finish with this:
Grace and Peace be WITH YOU.