Quotes for the Journey: Worship And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Stop what you are doing long enough to enjoy the sunset, listen to a special song that lifts you up, or pick up the phone and share some special thought with a caring friend.       -Barbara Johnson     Worship is the highest act of which a person is capable.  It not only stretches us beyond all the limits of our finite selves to affirm the divine depth of mystery and holiness in the living and eternal God, but it opens us at the deepest level of our being to an act which unites us most realistically with our fellow people.     -Samuel H. Miller     The highest point a person can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic, and more despairing:  Sacred Awe!       -Nikos Kazantzakis, from Zorba the Greek     When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.       -Hasidic saying     Do not forget that even as "to work is to worship" so to be cheery is to worship also, and to be happy is the first step to being pious.         -Robert Louis Stevenson      The worship of God is not a rule of safety-- it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable.      -Alfred North Whitehead

Little self-denials, little honesties, little passing words of sympathy, little nameless acts of kindness, little silent victories over favorite temptations--these are the silent threads of gold which, when woven together, gleam out so brightly in the pattern of life that God approves.       -Frederic William Farrar

Every praying person, every person who has an encounter with God, must have a passionate concern for his or her brother and sister, his or her neighbor.  To treat any of these as if he were less than the child of God is to deny the validity of one's spiritual existence.      -Desmond Tutu

In the act of worship itself, the experience of liberation becomes a constituent of the community's being . . . It is the power of God's Spirit invading the lives of the people, "building them up where they are torn down and propping them up on every leaning side."       -James H. Cone

One should hallow all that one does in one's natural life.  One eats in holiness, tastes the taste of food in holiness, and the table becomes an altar.  One works in holiness, and raises up the sparks which hide themselves in all tools.  One walks in holiness across the fields, and the soft songs of all herbs, which they voice to God, enter into the song of our soul.      -Martin Buber

This is my prayer to thee, my lord--strike, Strike at the root of penury in my heart. Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows. Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service. Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might. Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles. And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love.       -Rabindranath Tagore

O Lord God, we pray that we may be inspired to nobleness of life in the least things.  May we dignify all our daily life. May we set such a sacredness upon every part of our life, that nothing shall be trivial, nothing unimportant, and nothing dull, in the daily round.        -Henry Ward Beecher

The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven-- All's right with the world. Robert Browning

My church helps me to keep a sky in my life and to look up, to keep my hand in God's and hold on to Him, to see the eternal values above the material, to lift life above self to service for Christ, to see the good in others and praise it, to keep sweet and to keep busy for Him, to have a seeing eye, a feeling heart, a helping hand, to test the motive of life and choose the best, to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.      -The Watchman-Examiner

The soul of the Christian religion is reverence.      -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A person can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling "darkness" on the walls of his or her cell.       -C.S. Lewis

Who builds a church within their hearts And takes it with them everywhere Is holier far than they whose church Is but a one-day house of prayer. Morris Abel Beer

For the Christian who loves God, worship is the daily bread of patience.       -Honore de Balzac

There is a little plant called reverence in the corner of my soul's garden, which I love to have watered once a week.       -Oliver Wendell Holmes

If God's people hunger deeply enough, God will hear and send revival.  God requires more than casual prayers for revival. He wants His people to hunger and thirst for His mighty working.  To seek God's face is far more than occasionally mentioning revival in our prayer.  It involves repeated and prolonged prayer.  It requires holy determination in prayer, examining ourselves to see if anything in our lives is hindering God.       -Wesley Duewel

Those to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, have not yet visited the house of their souls whose windows are open from dawn to dawn.       -Khalil Gibran

A boy was born 'mid little things Between a little world and sky-- And dreamed not of the cosmic rings Round which the circling planets fly. He lived in little works and thoughts, Where little ventures grow and plod, And paced and plowed his little plots And prayed unto his little God. But as the mighty systems grew, His faith grew faint with many scars; His Cosmos widened in his view-- But God was lost among His stars. Another boy in lowly days As he, to little things was born, And gathered lore in woodland ways And from the glory of the morn. As wider skies broke on his view God greatened in his growing mind; Each year he dreamed his God anew And left his older God behind. He saw the boundless scheme dilate In star and blossom, sky and clod; And as the universe grew great He dreamed for it a greater God. Sam Foss

Before there can be fullness there must be emptiness.  Before God can fill us with Himself we must first be emptied of ourselves.       -A.W. Tozer

The church can have light only as it is full of the Spirit, and it can be full only as the members that compose it are filled individually.       -A.W. Tozer

My times of silence before God are very important to me now.  I put everything else down, every word away, and I am with the Lord.  When I'm quiet, life falls into perspective for me.  I have a very active mind and I'm a worrier, but in those moments when I choose to put that away, I rest beside the Shepherd in still places.  Why don't you give yourself a gift today?  Turn off the television or the car stereo, put down the newspaper or the business plan, and in the quietness, rest for a while beside the Shepherd of your soul.        -Sheila Walsh

Worship is yet another paradox of the religious life:  it is simultaneously the greatest duty and the greatest pleasure of faith.  Worship is the act of truly loving God.  Believe in this brilliant Being, this magnificent “higher power,” who not only created us but nurtures us with care and intelligence beyond our imagination, and obviously we are called to worship Him.        -M. Scott Peck

The law of giving and receiving is fundamental, and relates just as much to God as it does to us.  As we go through the door of giving ourselves to God in worship we find that God comes through that same door and gives Himself to us.  God’s insistence that we worship Him is not really a demand at all but an offer—an offer to share Himself with us.  When God asks us to worship Him, He is asking us to fulfill the deepest longing in Himself, which is His passionate desire to give Himself to us.  It is what Martin Luther called “the joyful exchange.”       -Selwyn Hughes

The soul suffers when we lack reverence.  We live in an age that understands respect--respect earned through achievement, power, or actions.  We live in an age that understands rights, obligations, and sets of commitments.  But we have difficulty experiencing reverence because it comes from a deeper place.  Reverence requires an experience of "otherness," the "thou-ness" of that other who crosses our path.        -D. Stephenson Bond

What else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God?  If I were a nightingale, I would do the nightingale's part; if I were a swan, I would do as a swan.  But now I am a rational creature, and I ought to praise God.  This is my work.  I do it, nor will I desert my post, so long as I am allowed to keep it.  And I ask you to join me in this same song.        -Epictetus

I worship best when I'm climbing a mountain, or walking along a river, or sitting at the edge of a lake, for then all of God's glory is before me and about me; it all becomes a part of me as my senses expand to accept it all.  There always comes a moment of exultation when I realize that this is what it's all about--the beauty of the world in which we live, the beauty that was created for us to enjoy, to marvel at, to live in.  God must be very sad indeed to watch us turn our backs on the beauty of the world in order to work longer hours so that we can gain more material goods.  The moment of exultation that comes upon me in such places is followed almost immediately by a state of exultation, in which I feel that I'm a vital part of this world, of the universe, of God. And that's when I worship best, for that's when my faith is the strongest--the mountains and trees and rivers don't worry about the passage of time, about aging, about changes, about whether or not I have the latest in digital technology or whether I have a cool car or a geeky car.  The mountains simply are, and the desert simply is--and that's how I see God at those times of worship.  God simply is, and though we can explain away the presence of the mountains through the action of tectonic plates, that doesn't diminish by one iota their majesty or beauty or power. At those times, I love life fully, and I love God fully, for the surroundings with which he's blessed me are truly wonderful. In the city, I have a slightly more difficult time worshipping.  Tailgaters, cynics, nay-sayers, critics--these kinds of people tend to take our focus off of the glory of the lives we have and force us to deal with unpleasantness in our lives.  I don't like that, and though I'm getting better at dealing with it, I still focus a bit too much on the negative.  I need to keep my mind focused on the fact that I am an eternal being, and that this life on earth is a temporary state, and once it ends, I won't be asked how often I was right or wrong or what I had for possessions, but how much time I spent in worship, how much time I spent helping my fellow human beings as a form of worship. I want to answer truly that I tried to live my life in a constant state of worship, with my eyes open to the beauty just as a child's eyes are open to the beauty and wonder of the world.  And that each time I saw beauty, I gave thanks to God that that beauty was a part of my life.  That's worship. I want to answer truly that I spent my time in corporate worship, in church or in prayer groups, helping other people in their faith, supporting them as much as I could, teaching them the little I knew, and learning from them of what they knew. I want to answer truly that there was a point in my life at which I gave my life to God as a form of worship--after all, he created me, so why should I hold back from Him something that he himself made? Worship is beautiful if we allow it to be.  If it's stagnant, repetitive ceremony and nothing more, then it's worth little, to God or to us.  Find those things that you find beautiful, and devote yourself to finding the wonder in them.  Even more challenging, find those things you don't find beautiful, and look deeply to find the beauty and wonder--that which can and should be worshipped--in all things. from http://livinglifefully.com

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