The opening text will come from a book by Abraham Joshua Heschel (God in Search of Man - A Philosophy of Judaism). As you are able to see by the title, the language may be a bit dated and therefore, I will, when able, make the language inclusive.
The sense of wonder, awe, and mystery does not give us a knowledge of God. It only leads to a plane where the question about God becomes an inescapable concern, to a situation in which we discover that we can neither place our anxiety in the safe deposit of opinions nor delegate to others the urgent task of answering the ultimate question…
Such ultimate concern is an act of worship, an act of acknowledging in the most intense manner the supremacy of the issue.
Every one of us is bound to have an ultimate object of worship, yet (each of us) is free to choose the object of (his/her) worship. (One) cannot live without it; it may be either a fictitious or a real object, God or an idol.
We must remember that worship takes many shapes. I know people who never go to worship at a church or synagogue or mosque…, but they regularly show sign of intense and devoted worship. It is a great temptation for all of us. It is a temptation to worship something…anything…that we want to give us life. But as Heschel seems to say and as Paul Tillich will note, there is the God – that is our ultimate concern…and then there are all the other less-than ultimate concerns, the objects and ideas to which we give our lives – idols abound around us. There are no atheists among us. Everyone drops his/her life into the hand of something. And yet, we are reminded that only One can hold us…all other concerns demand our support and our sacrifice of life in order to sustain them.
Connection: Sometimes it is good to try and take a look at what it is we worship during the days of our lives. Then it is even more important to do that with another person or group of people who, like you, profess a faith in God alone. For then, we are handed mirrors to look at and see what we often cannot see ourselves.
Lord of all that is and all that will be, our day is forged by your will and transformed by your grace. By the power of your Holy Spirit, turn our hearts that we may see the brilliance of your compassionate and endless love. Amen.
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