Tuesday, January 11, 2005

INVOCATION

Invocation in·vo·ca·tion n
1. a calling upon a greater power such as God or a spirit for help
2. a short prayer forming part of a religious service
3. the act of calling upon or quoting something such as a law as a reason or justification
4. a casting of a spell in an attempt to make an evil spirit appear, or the spell itself

At a recent church committee meeting the leader began his opening prayer, "O Lord, we call you into our presence."

It was an ordinary enough prayer and I'm sure it was well intentioned, but it struck me as very odd. Should we call God into our presence or should we be called to acknowledge that we are in the presence of God?

But what about all those scriptures about calling on the name of the Lord?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sometimes I think we've decided God is simply powerless without our invitation!

I agree with what you write. God IS present. We are told this in the Bible. I assume it to be true. I wonder if we are commanded to call upon the name of the Lord as a display of our faith, not as "permission for God to enter."

Steve said...

could be - after writing this I was humbled when I remembered all the Scriptures that tell us to call upon the name of the Lord.... But I still think the term "invocation" is weird.