The Harvest Worth Its Ache
by Donavon L Riley

True worship is not a matter of casting off form and rite, but of yielding to the deep, shaping power of tradition, where the soul is steadied and drawn into the greater work of God. — D.

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There’s a field at the far edge of our village, its grasses woven with frost, its furrows stiff with cold. At its center a stand of trees, weathered to a grey sheen. This is how the old ways of worship feel to many now—a stark remnant of a faith that no longer fits the quick, unburdened step of the times. We turn from the weight of form, eager for a faith we can carry lightly, mistaking plainness for purity and thinking to find freedom in stripping the branches bare.

C.S. Lewis sensed the trap laid in such ease. To discard form and rite, he said, does not make us humble; it leaves us tangled in ourselves, unable to lose our thought in the good work of the liturgy. The kneeling body, the spoken creed, the chant raised not to please the ear but to draw it upward—all these teach us to forget. To forget! Not as those lost in a fog, but as stones pressed deep into the riverbed, where the flood shapes without mercy or fuss. Such shaping is the root of all things steadfast and strong, yet we spurn it, unwilling to bow low enough to be formed.

Mark the blacksmith’s fire. The blade’s edge does not come on its own but through heat and hammer. Likewise, the worship of God calls for rhythm and yield, for hands made steady by work handed down. The old prayers, scored with the fingerprints of saints, hold not pomp but power. Cast these off, and the craft of worship weakens, its roots forgotten in pursuit of the quick and easy harvest. We must beware that hunger, because what we cast aside we will long for again when the fields run fallow.

Faithful worship bends under its own weight, bearing the gift of the old stonework that steadies the soul. A knelt body, a bowed head, the words spoken though we’ve said them a thousand times—all these are the clay that the Spirit presses into shape. And in that shaping, we find the truth: the form is not the foe of faith but its midwife. Through it, we are drawn deeper than we would dare to go on our own, losing what is small in us to join the wideness of the work of God. This is the harvest worth its ache.