I have always considered this song a little annoying. It’s so short and I can only sing it so many times before it starts to get on my nerves. I’ve heard and sung this a million times, but once again, I find new meaning in the words, and it has come to life to me in a whole new way.
“Come now is the time to worship
Come now is the time to give your heart
Come just as you are to worship
Come just as you are before your God
Come…
One day every tongue will confess you are God
One day every knee will bow
Still the greatest treasure remains for those who gladly chose you now”
Most churches start off the worship time with this song. I have always thought of it as a sort of in your face way of saying, ”Get your butt over here and praise God!” Don’t ask me why but it always seemed like this overbearing command type of thing. I was standing in church on Sunday and they started to play this song. I groaned a little inside because not only was I not really in the mood to worship, but on top of that we were going to sing my least favorite worship song. I was standing there in the congregation looking at the words on the screen when they suddenly came to life, and I realized I had been reading the lyrics the wrong way all this time. I had always focused on the “Come” part. This was the word that seemed like the overbearing command. It never seemed like a nice and inviting “Come” but more of a “Come!” But this time I focused on the rest of the phrase “Now is the time to worship”…
Hmmm, now is the time to worship? Now…why now? Then something inside whispered the answer, “Because now is when you have a chance to stand before your God. Now is when you are about to hear His words.
Now is the time to worship the only thing that you should ever be worshipping!!!”At that moment I felt the twinge of conviction. How many times a day do I elevate the pathetic and superfluous things in this world? Things that will rot and decay over the course of time, and things that may seem important now, but years from now I will forget ever happened or ever existed. But right now, right at that moment, I was sitting in a church and being given the chance (a chance that I rarely take outside of a church) to praise the One who gave me all the things that I enjoy.
With this idea in my head I continued to read the rest of the lyrics:
“Come now is the time to give your heart”
Whoa, I thought. This was a big one for me. “Now is the time to give your heart” Again, I asked myself the question why? Why now?
“Because this is when it is safe to do so” I felt something say inside of me. How many times have I put my heart into something that was not really worth it? How many times do I invest in things that have no real meaning or won’t be beneficial to me in the end? But now, right here and in this moment I was sitting in church before the One who is able to take care of my heart and keep it safe. He is the same today, yesterday, and forever. I don’t have to worry about giving my heart to Him because He is the only One capable of doing good and only good for it.
“Come just as you are to worship
Come just as you are before your God.”
This is another beautiful phrase because I don’t have to pretend in front of God. It is quite impossible to do so in fact. The beautiful thing is that even though God can see right through me, even though He can see every ugly crevice of my heart He is willing to take me as I am.
“One day every tongue will confess you are God
One day every knee will bow
Still the greatest treasure remains for those who gladly chose you now”
This part of the song didn’t come alive to me until after the congregation sang them and the worship team continued to play with just the instruments. Then out of nowhere I heard this saxophone start to play. I hadn’t seen the musician before because he was tucked in the corner of the stage. He wasn’t playing anything too fancy, just the melody to the song. I watched as he breathed in and out of his gold music maker, I watched his fingers tap the little gold levers (I don’t know what they are officially called). He was concentrating on his music sheets. I could see it in his eyes. Then I got to thinking about musicians in general and how much practice it takes them to get their instruments to sound right. I think of when I was first starting to play the piano. My fingers would hit the wrong keys and the song would sound muddled, choppy, and just plain bad. But as I practiced more and more, my muscle memory would kick in, patterns would form in my brain and I didn’t even need to look down at my fingers to play. It’s always a trial to learn a new song. There’s this phase where your brain totally understands the notes on the page, but its getting your fingers to understand and follow through that makes you growl in frustration. I wonder if that’s how God looks at us sometimes. I think of Him as the brain part in our bodies. He totally gets it and understands what needs to happen. He sends us messages and signs. Sometimes these are not as clear as we would like them to me, but messages and sings all the same. Actually getting us to do what He wants us to do to make music seems like it must be a tedious task. But this last stanza gives me a little bit of hope because it says that there will be one day where the brain and the hands will move as one, and I will be playing the tunes that are most pleasing to the only Ear that is worth pleasing. One day my tongue will be speaking the words that are worth speaking. And one day, my stubborn knees will bend and I will gladly lower my countenance and my pride in the face of the Almighty One. One day…
