What church can do for a soul

Very often when I left the place of worship the first impression I had of the 'outside world' was how small it was - how puny its politics, paltry its appetites, squinteyed its interests. I had just spent an hour or so with friends reorienting myself in the realities of the world - the huge sweep of salvation and the minute particularities of holiness - and would blink my eyes in disbelief that so many are willing to live in such reduced and cramped conditions. But after a few hours or days, I found myself getting used to and going along with its assumptions since most of the politicians and journalists, artists and entertainers, stockbrokers and shoppers seem to assume that that was the real world. And then Sunday would come around again, and some pastor would call me back to reality, 'Let us worship God.' And I would get it straight
again, see it whole.

E.H. Peterson, The Wisdom of Each Other