ABOVE the entrance of a church I know well hangs a notice that says ‘You are now entering a place of worship’. Nothing unusual about that, you might think, except that the notice is on the inside of the door, not the outside.

Facing you as you walk out of the building is a reminder that worship happens outside the church as much as inside it. ‘O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness’, says one of the Psalms, but it continues: ‘let the whole earth stand in awe of him’. The praise of God is a duty and joy in all places and at all times.

This is more easily said than done. How do you worship God in the hospital waiting room, anxiously waiting for tests? How do you worship God in the car, stuck in traffic and late for an appointment? How do you worship God when doing the things you least enjoy: homework, the tax return, the washing up?

God is with us in each of these places and at each of these tasks, but most of the time we are reluctant to make him welcome.

The problem lies with us and not with God. Sister Wendy Beckett says that ‘the real difficulty with prayer is that it has no difficulty’: ‘Prayer is God's taking possession of us.

We expose to him what we are, and he gazes on us with the creative eye of Holy Love.

God's gaze is transforming: God does not leave us in our poverty, but draws into being all we are meant to become’.

It’s tempting to think that we can only worship God when we are ready, spruced up in our Sunday best. But God knows us better than that: in fact God knows us better than we know ourselves. So when we pray the best policy is openness and honesty: whoever we are, wherever we are, whatever we are doing.

Those of us who are lucky enough to live in comfortable houses know that we live from our homes as much as we live in them. Homes are places of security to which we can retreat, but they are also places of strength that make our lives richer, fuller and friendlier.

Churches and other religious buildings are the same. They are not holy hideaways, where we tuck ourselves away for the odd special moment with God. They are places of spacious beauty that teach us to look out for God always and everywhere.

As we leave them, our hearts are tuned to the frequency of worship, so that in the words of a Cumbrian poet: ‘In the preoccupations of day by day We shall find grace and a glint of glory, And blossom yearly like the damsons’ (Norman Nicholson, The Old Man of the Mountains).