Worship is the relentless appreciation, acknowledgment, and expression of admiration of any entity for all it has either accomplished or has been perceived to have accomplished. Ultimate worship, therefore, is the relentless appreciation, acknowledgement, and expression of admiration of the ultimate originator, author, and perfector of our world’s most admirable concepts, acts, ideas, beings, and constructs. Everyone worships; the key variance across cultures and people is not if they worship but rather what they worship.
A quick side note: the scope of this discussion is worship; I will leave the theist vs. atheist philosophy apologetics to the likes of more intelligent and more widely respected thinkers, of which I am not included. I do not wish to prove the existence, sovereignty, or nature of God; I only wish to illustrate the importance and urgency of worship and what it requires to be a worshiper in the midst of a real, overwhelming, and awesome God in light the love-sacrifice He made through Jesus Christ. For the sake of this discussion, I default to the core belief that God is all powerful and all loving (Theodicy to be handled by C.S. Lewis) and therefore worthy of all worship; enough said.
This Being, inevitably God, therefore worthy of our relentless worship is to be revered with ultimate respect and admiration while simultaneously being adorned with all we can conceivably give: our life, our actions, our emotions, and all of our physical and metal faculties. “Our God who has done immeasurably more” than we can perceive is the ultimate object of our human worship. So our charge is this: to gain wisdom and understanding (Proverbs 2) of, and open our minds eyes to all the vast greatness of who God is and the constructs and conceptions of His divine mind and sovereign hands; for once we know truth our lives will know no greater purpose than to admire and worship the Creator of all – God.
The Rocks Cry Out
Every created thing carries with it the fingerprint of its creator; the script of our world and its inhabitants inevitably resounds with the tone and likeness who God is, what He is like, and how He thinks. All strands of study - be they physical sciences (biology, astrology, physics, etc), philosophical studies, mathematical theories, mental processes, tangible and intangible concepts, or any other study – can be unequivocally tied off at the same knot; God. With the acknowledgement of who God is and His role in the physical realm, we are compelled if not forced to turn our eyes to the spiritual.
By examining the vast complexities of the human body – the biological code written in DNA, each cells mechanism for disposing of waste, the Nervous system, the eye, the birth of a new child – I am left with one option: awe and worship of the Author. By staring into space and dwelling on the immeasurable span of stars, planets, physical phenomena, and cosmic processes I am forced to my intellectual knees in humble admiration. By listening to and internalizing a perfectly compiled musical score and reflecting on the mathematical theory behind each note, harmonic, and measure I am moved by the physical energy of sound into an emotional state of mind – one I would not have entered in the absence of the power of math, energy, and music. Who conceived these everyday miracles? Who wrote the script that the world and everything in it is reading from?
No matter what I ponder or study, everything leads me back to one key observation: through knowledge of the complexities of the physical world around me, I am compelled into relentless appreciation, acknowledgment, and expression of my admiration toward God. Even the rocks cry out with the praises and worship of God; everything they are is everything God ever created them to be, complexities and all. If we are willing to acknowledge and listen, all creation cries out with the admiration and reality of who God is. All physical aside, my mind is quickly overwhelmed when I begin to consider the ramifications of our consciousness and what implications it has for the indescribable force that God truly is; a discussion worthy of many more hours of study and writing.
The Only Logical Conclusion: HOW?
So we are left where we started, only now in worship. In view of all He has accomplished, once our minds are spent, and mental processes evolve from a manic, frantic jitter of thought-flashes into a slow, tired, dull pace, we sigh with relief at the paradoxical simplicity of what we have to do: worship God with all we possibly can. At this pivotal point, it then becomes not a question of WHY we should worship, but HOW.
How can I, a single being in a limited frame of time, mind, and ability, bring worship and praise to the God of the entire universe in a way that catches His attention and brings Him pleasure? Is there a word or phrase that I can utter that would satisfy this mandate or my hearts yearning? Will I ever be able to give God the amount of glory and gratitude that he deserves? Is there anything I can do to truly show Him the relentless appreciation, acknowledgment, and admiration that He has caused me to feel? HOW do I worship? That, my friend, is a discussion best left for another day.
