Since I was off work this past week we decided it was the perfect opportunity to do some work on the kitchen.  The biggest part of this work was refinishing the cabinets.  After all the work they look pretty good if I say so myself.  But that good finished product didn’t come easy.  Contrary to popular belief the painting was not the hard part.  Matter of fact it was the shortest part with the least amount of work.  It was the prep work that was the hardest and took the most time.  I was two days into the project before I pulled the trigger on my spray gun.  The doors had to be pulled, cleaned, de-glossed, sanded, and primed.  Then the entire kitchen had to be masked off; anything that wasn’t changing color had to be covered.  In the end the painting took five minutes.

A lot of life is similar to this.  The big showy thing that most people think of as the main event is usually not what takes the most work.  A click of a mouse sets off a half-hour long firework show that took technicians months to setup and program.  The latest iPhone gets set up by a new owner in a brief time compared to the months of development and design.

Our worship service is no different.  We come together a few times a week and for the most part everything goes smoothly as planned and it all seems effortless.  But a lot of preparation goes into it.  Neville spends hours preparing a sermon that will last twenty-three minutes.  The song leader will pour through the song books choosing meaningful songs for the service and practice them to lead the congregation as best they can through a few three-minute songs.  The brother who presides over the serving of communion spends more time preparing his thoughts and message than delivering that message will ever take.

Even if we are not leading in the service we have prep work to do, don’t we?  Or do we think we’ll have a great and acceptable worship just walking in and approaching God without being prepared?  Do we spend time in prayer or meditation preparing to gather for worship?  Should we?  Absolutely.  Meditate, pray, read the scripture…  Any and all of these things help us get prepared for our meeting with THE King.  An hour’s worth of worship deserves more than moment’s worth of preparation.  A good end to any endeavor is in the prep work.