“Worship the LORD, your God.” Luke 4:8
The word “worship” can mean different things to us. The Greek word that Jesus uses in the verse above is “proskeneyo,” a word that has bowing down or even falling on your face at its root. If you asked most people today what worship means in a religious sense, they would probably say something about singing. If you asked them to think about the word worship outside of a religious connotation, they would probably think of heaping praise upon a person or thing.
If you look at all the different senses of worship throughout the Bible, you get even more possibilities. People worship in celebration. The Sun worships by just doing its job of moving across the sky everyday. There are all sorts of different ways to worship.
I remember reading a freeing text in the book “Spiritual Disciplines Handbook”. It simple encouraged us to think about all of the “worship” or celebration that we do outside of religiousity. Wearing the Seminoles logo emblazoned on my sweatshirt then becomes worship. Eating the celebratory birthday meal with a friend becomes worship. Geeking out about the “expanded universe” of a TV show or movie franchise becomes worship. Hiking up to the top of the mountain to see the view becomes worship.
I think sometimes we fail to worship because we think of “worship” as this narrowly defined set of things like being at church or listening to Christian music. Those are good things by the way, but our worship can be even more robust. We can eat a meal in celebration of what God has done (they used to call Christian celebrations ‘feasts’). We can wear purple all through Lent and it counts as worship.
Because when you get down to it, “worship” is really about our recognizing the value of God. And He is pretty valuable. He sent His Son to die for us, after all. He’s worthy of our worship. He’s worthy of our singing, but also of our bowing down, and also of our geeking out, and also of our clothing choices, and also of our eating (or fasting), and also of….just about anything that you can come up with.
So this week, find a new way to worship, and worship the LORD, your God. He is worth it, afterall.