Let Us Worship 7/22/45
Scripture: Psalm 122
Text: Psalm 122: 1; “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.”
Though I don’t care for it much on Sunday morning, nevertheless I like to play at golf. The ability, ease and skill with which an experienced player clicks that little white ball into the distance, or rolls it unerringly toward the cup, is something I admire and long to accomplish.
But, alas, the score card is usually a humbling reminder of my topped drives, dubbed approach shots, and wild putts. I have not much time for the game, and scant skill during any time that I do devote to it. However, I do find it a pleasant exercise and relaxation. For there always looms up the tantalizing prospect of someday playing every shot well for nine holes!
I have sometimes studied, often in disgust, the reasons (aside from insufficient practice) for my failure to come nearer to the ideal in playing that game. And I have made one observation that is valuable to me. It is this: when my nerves or muscles are tense, or when my mind is distracted with thoughts ranging from the text to be chosen for the next Sunday’s sermon, through the calls that I want yet to make, to the annoyance I have over making a six or seven on the last par three hole, I do not play as good a game, even for me, as when nerves and muscles are relaxed and controlled, and mind is pleasantly concentrated in a study of the next shot to be made.
Now that is a parable for me. And I suspect that it may be for a great many other people. For all of us would like to do the jobs to which we give our life’s concern, with an ease and skill approaching perfection. But all of us fall short of that ideal most of the time, often so far short that the matter distresses us. And there are times when we wonder if we are really headed in the right direction. Perhaps we are taking a poor stance or using the wrong swing toward life. Or maybe this job isn’t our game after all and we perhaps ought to give it up and try another!
There may be instances in which the job, like the game, ought to be changed. But usually what we need is simply the means of improving what we are now about. To be able to shut out all of the doubts, fears, annoyances, temptations and other distractions; to be able to go about our work with better self control, keener perception, calmer judgment; would improve the game or the job of any one of us.
Most of us have to settle, in one way or another, the problem as to how we can be in the best trim, in best preparedness for life’s perplexities. We try the simple rules of hygiene in promoting bodily health and fitness. We try to keep our minds alert and informed and disciplined. And when our whole being becomes too weary or distracted, we seek rest, relaxation, sleep, in order that we may be renewed.
If you are like me, however, you frequently find that peace of mind does not necessarily or sufficiently follow either sleep or physical recreation. And you now and then cry out for another means of finding peace of soul and integrity of purpose. And so I want to suggest to you what I think may be the most valuable of all such means: worship.
Yes, but what does worship have to do with warfare, with the economic danger that lurks in the national and world situations, with great political and social problems; with problems of racial and class adjustments; with my personal peeves; with the state of your health; with our troubles and burdens, the misfortunes that we have encountered or may encounter?
Well, I think it does have something to do with all of these perplexities, and many more. I think that, more than rest or any other re-creation, it places us in calm, positive control of our outlook, because it gives us a vantage point higher than our own. A sleep, a vacation, a game, is necessary for anyone. But it may be merely an escape from the perplexities of this life into which we are thrust. Worship is a whole-hearted endeavor to meet and commune with God, that we may be led rather than thrust.
What is worship, then? A dictionary might define it as reverence, respect, honor, especially to deity. And it is all of those, with a genuineness not connoted by those words in themselves. “It is coming close to God, in a respectful, yet friendly spirit,” says one. Jesus taught us to approach God as an unspoiled child approaches its earthly father. It is not a form of ritual nor a position of the body, though the ritual and the bowed head or bent knee may lead one toward the attitude of worship.
Worship includes reverence, praise, appreciation of God’s omnipresent life about us; it includes our desire to know and to do that which is in harmony with God; it includes obedience to, or cooperation with, the finest spiritual principles; and it includes our trust in an underlying reality that inspires us to live by faith and hope, courageously and cheerfully.
“Worship ascribes worth to that toward which it is directed. That is how the word originated. That which to a believer seems to be of the highest worth” becomes his object of worship. With some it seems to be money or possessions; with some fame or power. But with most people it is God, as each one of us, according to our several abilities, understands God. We place ourselves in God’s keeping by the spirit of our worship.
And if we were able to worship God better, perhaps we could pray real prayers more easily. Dr. Richard C. Cabot, sometime professor of medicine and social ethics at Harvard University, says that most of us “are piteously unexpressed.” We can’t let out and put into form or expression that which is pent up within us. How many, in whom we least expect it, are longing to let themselves out in song or rhythmic movement! How many, in whom we least expect it, are longing to pray! How many who hardly even suspect it themselves!
With our average population, worship and prayer may not seem to be in fashion. But that does not discredit the need for them. “There are plenty of loafers and drudges who never learn to work, plenty of workers who cannot play, and whole nations full of people who have only the most elementary acquaintance with love.” Yet this does not prove that man does not inherently need work and play and love as a part of his existence. Dr. Cabot believes that, just as these are needed in human life, so “worship is a permanent and necessary privilege of the human spirit.”
Worship, and the prayer which is a part of it, renew the spirit “as sleep renews the body. Our souls as well as our bodies get drained, now and then, of available energy.” Or the energies which we have, are dissipated in too many different directions. And we deplete our control and judgment and confidence in our lives. Our “spiritual fatigue” may show itself “in loss of power,” or “lack of feeling for life.” We can “see neither straight nor far. We magnify trifles and ignore the universe.” And worship is that which renews and re-creates the soul “when it has gone stale. For worship is the conscious love of the Spirit of the Universe, and we need it regularly, like food or sleep.”
“Because worship is a renewal of our depleted spiritual energies,” says Dr. Cabot, “it is naturally intermittent.” But it should be regular. Just how often your body needs sleep, relaxation, food, and in what quantities, you determine for yourself by experiment. So, also, you may want to determine when, and how often, and after what manner you will worship.
But do it, and do it both alone and at regular times in the company of others. There are many, many people who find that they can take a better stance before their job for a whole week, and can hit the essentials far more effectively, by using one day in the week for rest and relaxation of the body and, more important, for the re-integration of the soul in worship to Almighty God. And they do so, not just because Moses gave it as a command from God to the Jews, but because they found that the reason behind that command applies to their own lives. “I was glad when they said unto me, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.’”
Prayer
“O Thou Holy One who inhabitest Eternity, visit us with the inward vision of thy glory, that we may bow our hearts before thee, and obtain that grace which thou hast promised to the lowly, through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.”
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Dates and places delivered:
Kahului Union Church, April 22, 1934
Puunene Hawaiian Church, April 29, 1934
Wananalua Church, Hana, June 17, 1934
Huelo Hawaiian Church, July 1, 1934
Pauwela Hawaiian Church, July 29, 1934
Puunene Japanese church, September 9, 1934
Maui Minister’s Fellowship, October 15, 1934
Kahului Union Church, March 8, 1936
Pilgrim Church, September 27, 1936 PM
Wisconsin Rapids, July 22, 1945