“Come, let us worship and bow down, Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” (Psalms 95:6, NASB)

How many times have we said these words – worship, bow down and kneel- standing erect, without so much as a genuflect? To be accurate, the three actions call for ducking, lowering ourselves. Gee! I thought that we learned to do that for our parents, even after we leave the nest and have our own families.

Is it legit to say we are doing the three in the SPIRIT?

The sight of mother or father always brings a barek, barek, bend the knee, bend the knee!. Even when we come to conscientiously disagree with them we bless – honour – our parents, often with head bowed. This generation is definitely cursed: for failing to reckon honestly with ancestral contribution to our times and our own wholehearted response to the river of life. Is that not what Malachi reports from Yahweh’s mouth?

Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.

Malachi 4:5-6, NASB

If we have not taken John the Baptist seriously responding to the Lord will hardly show up on our radar.