Back to You

I wrote this song imagining it might be sung by a congregation right before they exit through the same doors by which they entered. Church doors (like most doors, I suppose) have a two-fold purpose.

We exit just to re-enter the next week; we enter only to exit again. They serve as the portal of both our worship and our work, our gathering and our scattering. What happens inside the doors after we enter fuels what happens outside the doors once we exit. And what happens outside the doors has its aim toward what happens within.

The Second Vatican Council said it this way: “The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed, and at the same time it is the fountain from which all her power flows.”

Everything comes from the God we worship. And to Him, everything returns. Just as the very breath that carries our songs of praise came first from God and finds in our singing its natural orientation, directed back toward Him in gratitude. So, too, our lives. So, too, our neighbors.

The apostle Paul once wrote that, through Christ, God is reconciling all things back to Himself by making peace through the blood of the cross (Colossians 1:19-20). Therefore, let us never tire of entering again and again through church doors to lift high the name of Christ, to celebrate His death, and proclaim His resurrection. And, with equal enthusiasm, let us exit again and again through those same doors to participate with God in his ministry of reconciliation. Gathering to scatter; scattering to gather again.

Credits

Words & Music: Bill Wolf