How should we come to meeting? Reluctantly? No. Burdened by a feeling of obligation to attend? No. Expecting something dull and tedious? No! If a meeting evokes only dullness in its members it is a dead meeting and ought to be laid down. A live meeting evokes life. Just the prospect of attending such a meeting should quicken us. It were better to come alive doing housework than to become deadened in a meeting house.
Come with the expectancy that, as you make effort to turn yourself Godwards, the life deep within you will arise, and meet you half-way, and call you, and draw you, gather you into God's presence. Come with the hope that the Teacher within will teach you of spiritual things. Come with the expectancy that as you meet with other Friends, in this very gathering you and they will be shaken awake by the impact of God's power, and made to tremble, and become actual Quakers. Come with the prayer that one and all may be "brought through the very ocean of darkness and death, by the eternal, glorious power of Christ, into the ocean of light and love."
What should we do, in and out of meeting, in our periods of worship and in our daily lives? Practice the presence of God. Practice, as far as we are able, the love of God and the love of man and all creation. But let George Fox declare it to us, as he declared it to the early Friends and to people of all ranks and conditions in two continents. "All people must first come to the Spirit of God in themselves, by which they might know God and Christ, of whom the prophets and apostles learnt; by which Spirit they might have fellowship with the Son, and with the Father, and with the Scriptures, and with one another; and without this Spirit they can know neither God nor Christ, nor the Scriptures, nor have right fellowship one with another."
FOR FURTHER READING
Books
An Apology for the True Christian Divinity by Robert Barclay
The Book of Discipline of the Religious Society of Friends
Creative Worship by Howard H. Brinton