A couple of Sundays ago, I had someone express to me how glad they were that they had come to church. “I just couldn’t make it Monday through Saturday,” they said, “without having my spiritual batteries charged. Worship is what helps get me through the week!”
There is a lot of truth in that statement, of course. When done well, worship can be truly uplifting and inspiring and help fortify us for many of the mundane tasks which await us in the week ahead. However, worship is also a great deal more than that. It’s not just a holy pep rally aimed at getting us through the next six days. It is meant to change the way we are going to live during those days. In effect, worship gives us a new way of looking at the world, and a fresh vocabulary to describe it.
The renowned physicist Neils Bohr (who is often credited with being the father of quantum mechanics) once said that the first inkling he had about the nature of the universe came when he was a child gazing into the fishpond at his family home. For hours on end, he would lie beside the pond, watching the fish swim back and forth in the water.
Then one day he realized with a start that the fish he was watching did not know that they were being watched. Indeed, the fish were completely unaware of any reality outside of the pond. Sunlight streaming in from above was, to the fish, simply an inner illumination contained entirely within the pond. Even when it rained, the fish saw this not as an event from the outside, but only as ripples and splashes enclosed within their environment. Bohr wondered if humans were like the fish in this regard, being acted on in multiple dimensions of reality, but unaware of it because of our limited frame of reference.
That observation got me to thinking: What if Sunday worship were the chance to lie down beside life’s pond and to realize that what often looks and sounds like events contained within the world are actually interventions from a different realm? What if Sunday allowed us to see and hear what is usually hidden from our eyes and ears during the rest of the week? Namely, that God is present and at work in every corner of our life.
Maybe then we would not so easily say things like, “We go to church on Sunday, and then we go back out into the ‘real world.’” As the theologian William Willimon has noted, this expression has it all backward. Worship is actually the “real world.” At its most profound, worship is a way of beholding the world as it actually looks in its full, transparent, God-intended reality—a place where we can hear and see and experience what is genuinely true about our lives, and thus unmask the illusions that the outside world would have us believe.
There is a lot of truth in that statement, of course. When done well, worship can be truly uplifting and inspiring and help fortify us for many of the mundane tasks which await us in the week ahead. However, worship is also a great deal more than that. It’s not just a holy pep rally aimed at getting us through the next six days. It is meant to change the way we are going to live during those days. In effect, worship gives us a new way of looking at the world, and a fresh vocabulary to describe it.
The renowned physicist Neils Bohr (who is often credited with being the father of quantum mechanics) once said that the first inkling he had about the nature of the universe came when he was a child gazing into the fishpond at his family home. For hours on end, he would lie beside the pond, watching the fish swim back and forth in the water.
Then one day he realized with a start that the fish he was watching did not know that they were being watched. Indeed, the fish were completely unaware of any reality outside of the pond. Sunlight streaming in from above was, to the fish, simply an inner illumination contained entirely within the pond. Even when it rained, the fish saw this not as an event from the outside, but only as ripples and splashes enclosed within their environment. Bohr wondered if humans were like the fish in this regard, being acted on in multiple dimensions of reality, but unaware of it because of our limited frame of reference.
That observation got me to thinking: What if Sunday worship were the chance to lie down beside life’s pond and to realize that what often looks and sounds like events contained within the world are actually interventions from a different realm? What if Sunday allowed us to see and hear what is usually hidden from our eyes and ears during the rest of the week? Namely, that God is present and at work in every corner of our life.
Maybe then we would not so easily say things like, “We go to church on Sunday, and then we go back out into the ‘real world.’” As the theologian William Willimon has noted, this expression has it all backward. Worship is actually the “real world.” At its most profound, worship is a way of beholding the world as it actually looks in its full, transparent, God-intended reality—a place where we can hear and see and experience what is genuinely true about our lives, and thus unmask the illusions that the outside world would have us believe.
posted by Dr. Robert Crilley at
4:13 PM
2 Comments:
I agree with Bohr, we really have no idea what we dont know. We perceive only so much. Plodding along thinking we have it all figured out, then life throws us an inexplicable curveball. The best thing to do is follow the advice of the good book. Accept the counsel of the One who does know.
By
Anonymous, at 7:24 AM
I think the goal here is to make the reality of Sunday morning last through the next week. Seeing the world through the eyes of the Maker is the gift of worship. Knowing and excepting God's love changes everything about the world "outside".
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Anonymous, at 5:53 PM
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