A Meditation on Worship

A couple of summers ago I had an experience with God while chipping wood. One of my co-workers started up the wood chipper and I approached it with awe and fear. I was so afraid of its grinding teeth and diesel belching gut that the first branches I timidly tossed at the machine fell short. I was afraid that my hand would get pulled in if I was still holding the branch when the machine grabbed it.

After awhile, I was still afraid of the monstrous machine, but I lost some of my awe because I thought it could only chip smaller limbs. When the beast devoured a chunk of wood only a little smaller than my head, I was immediately awed again. This experience taught me two things about worship: (1) we can only be awed by something bigger than ourselves, better than ourselves, or completely foreign to us and, (2) the amount of awe and fear we display for this thing is dependent on how we view it. In other words, something strange and bigger than ourselves can still have a limited amount of awe factor if we limit our expectations and understanding of it.

Some people have a small view of God, meaning they don’t think about Him as He truly is, splendid in all His glory and power. This becomes a problem, as Madeleine L’Engle says in Walking on Water, because when we turn away from who God really is to our own notions of who we think He is, we invent “little gods who have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, hands and touch not, and who have nothing to say to us in the times of our deepest need.”

On the other hand, there are those who have a high view of God, and this God interacts with them in a way they can comprehend. Their God is a big God capable of big things who does in fact do big things. I also learned from my wood-chipping experience that it is important to confess our sins to God. I wouldn’t bring my branches to the chipper for fear of getting hurt. I think people don’t confess their sins to God for fear of getting smoked. But the machine was designed to digest wood, not people, and God is the same – He has words for sin and those who cling to it, but not for those who want to give it up. Sure, we reap the consequences of our sin, but God wants us to confess our sins so that the consequences don’t get worse. If we approach God obstinately holding our sins, unwilling to give them up, God will chew us up like a person who refuses to let go of the branch being run through the chipper.

This too is a part of worship. Naming and repenting of our sins helps us view God as He really is: an all-powerful, all-sovereign, all-redeeming, all-loving, all-just Saviour. The act of repentance proves to us that we can’t save ourselves. It is only when we realize this and in holy awe and fear cast our entire selves upon His goodness and mercy and power,

that we have truly learned to worship. Until we reach this point, all else is pretence.