I'm talking about how your heart should be as you stand.
Stand ready. Stand because you love. Most importantly-- stand because you are called.
Abbot Joseph, who publishes the Word Incarnate blog, explains:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, says the Scripture several times, and it is also the beginning of our understanding of who we are before God. It is not the fullness of understanding, since it does not yet convey the tenderness of God’s compassion and love. Yet it is essential that we have something of this holy fear in our experience of God, for if we don’t we will never truly understand or fully appreciate the mercy and love of God. If we only project upon God our own concept or experience of human compassion and love, we will never properly know God and hence will not relate to Him as He desires. It is only when we experience that standing-in-awe before the Holy One, the trembling awareness of our sinfulness and radical insufficiency before the Mysterium Tremendum that is the ineffable glory of the Divine Nature, that we can begin to grasp the magnitude of mercy and God’s limitless love, and the incomprehensible gift of God’s desire to enter into a personal relationship with us in love and joy.Do not stand in doubt of yourself or your reason for being there. Stand boldly, in humility.
There are many who believe in God’s transcendent glory but not in his desire for intimate communion with us. Two Iranian women who became Christians were recently put on trial and imprisoned simply for converting. One of their “blasphemies” was believing that the transcendent God actually spoke to them. The Muslim prosecutor bellowed: “It is impossible for God to do such a thing!” They replied: “So are you saying, then, that God is not Almighty?” The prosecutor changed his tactic and then said: “You are not worthy.” They responded: “It is up to God to decide whether or not we are worthy.” So it precisely because God is Almighty that He can lower Himself to speak with sinful creatures. And it is not for sinful creatures to decide their worthiness or unworthiness to stand before God. We come because He calls.
"For if my people humble themselves...then I will hear from heaven."
