Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 0-193

From ‘Sunrise Sunset’ (HarperCollins/Harper San Francisco), Rowland Croucher’s book of daily meditations. Feel free to use or adapt it.

Guard your steps when you go into the house of God. Ecclesiastes 5:1.

Worship isn’t something ‘observed’ or ‘attended’, it is something we are and do. As ‘we are what we eat’ so ‘we are what we worship’ and we become like the God we worship. So we step back from the rush of life and ponder its realities at an ultimate level at a special time each week. But for true worshippers every time and every place is special.

The inward imperative as we ‘come to worship’ is to ‘take the shoes from [our] feet, for the place on which [we] stand is holy ground’ (Exodus 3:5). ‘Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire’ (Hebrews 12:28,29). We had better be careful, then: the way we worship could be hazardous!

Worship in Old Testament times was sometimes liturgical, sometimes free. There we seem to have two worship traditions.

One was priestly, cultic, authoritarian and dynastic, the other more congregational, democratic, prophetic and ethical. Worship was both ritual and hearty service (Deuteronomy 11:13, Psalm 40:6-8, 50:12-15, Micah 6:6-8).

Christian church history has similarly seen worship move from one extreme to the other. So there may not be just one way to worship!

Thank you, Lord, that your people throughout the earth are diverse, so they worship in different ways. For these many rich traditions, I praise you: help me to worship in many ways too, rather than being stuck in one tradition. Amen.