Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 0-185

WORSHIP IS ALL OF LIFE

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

What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me? Psalm 116:12.

Worship is the appropriate response to the God who gives everything life, to the Holy One, who inhabits eternity, to the King of kings and Lord of lords, who is God our Saviour. Worship is meeting – God with us, to which we respond with wonder, amazement and awe. ‘We worship God because God is to be worshipped’. We worship not because worship benefits us (although it does), not because we need to (although we do), nor because it is relevant to our daily lives (although it is), but because God is.

Saint Benedict founded an order with the motto laborare est orare, ‘to work is to pray’. Worship is service (it’s the same word in the New Testament): serving the Lord in our praises, praising the Lord in our ministry to others, ministering to the Lord in prayerful solitude – it’s all worship. Worship is both individual and corporate, done both in ‘the secret place’ and in the redeemed community.

Holy Lord, may I become the kind of devout person for whom worship is all of life, and will be life-long. Amen.