I have heard more ‘worship is…’ definitions that I can remember. Worship is one of those dynamic, epic, contraversial and simple words that a concise defintion cannot seem to encompass. The word is so often definied through our experience, our varying traditions and at times through a theological framework. Though a concise definition seems illusive… I find defintions usually helpful in helping to further understand and participate in life as a worshipper of Jesus.
So add this one to the increasing ‘Worship is…’ suggestions. Came across it today in Kenneth Boa’s Conformed to His Image (pg 162).
‘Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of our conscious by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of the imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy of that self-centerdness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.’
(William Temple)
That’s a good one…I like the way Temple punctuates the fact the worship is the life lived with God as the center and as the source….
Indeed. I also appreciate the language of ‘purifying our imagination’ – though I know that our community needs to be challenge in our ability to use and engage our imaginations. A wise friend said to me one day that we encounter many people in our culture with imagineless imaginations.