Worship changes us. To worship is to quicken the conscience by the Holiness of God, To feed the mind with the Truth of God, To purge the imagination by the Beauty of God, To devote the will to the Purpose of God. The ways in which Christian churches worship vary enormously. But whatever outward shape it takes, Christian worship always happens in, and responds to, the tension between two contrasting truths about God, truths which come to the fore during Advent. It is the tension between these apparently contradictory truths which changes us.
Worship celebrates that presence.
Worship also acknowledges this. The tension of these paradoxical truths is always at the heart of worship, but is made more acute, more poignant in this season of Advent. This is the Advent challenge. Here we are in this season of preparation. We prepare to remember the coming of Christ in the Incarnation.