Today is the great feast of Pentecost. The books I have read and liturgical texts I have heard all speak of God's outpouring of grace, the gift of the Holy Spirit freely given to the apostles. Jesus Christ is revealed yet again as the one whom we worship, together with his Father, and the Holy Spirit. God has people whom God loves - us! Such good news, and yet, as I prepared for church today, I had a slight moment of trepidation. Suffering recently from some minor yet annoying lumbar and knee aches, I dreaded the forthcoming Vespers which follows Liturgy in my parish, along with super-long kneeling prayers. Yes, my back now aches from those prayers (my knee, not so bad). What really struck me at that time is what it means to kneel. Kneeling is an almost-universal gesture of worshipping the divine, yet as I heard the texts and sang the hymns with the choir, along with the offering of incense, it struck me that, no matter how deep we go with the Christological or pneumatological aspects of the feast, it boils down to this: we kneel in worship before God because he draws us to himself and wants us to be with him for eternity. We kneel in worship before God because, as brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, because we stand with Christ before the throne of God, offering Him prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving. We kneel in worship before God because, no matter our challenges today, economic, social, personal, he will wipe away every tear because his attention to the citizens of his kingdom knows no end. We offer thanks to God for sending Christ to us, so we could know him again; we offer thanks to Christ for showing us, in every word, deed, and thought, who the Father is and how we become his children; we offer thanks to the Holy Spirit, for bringing us before God and allowing us to speak to him every time we gather together in the name of Jesus Christ.

Yes, my back aches horribly and I'm icing it now while I write this.  I thank God for this backache, because the pain reminds me that I have the privilege of worshipping him and being a citizen of his kingdom - for eternity.