What is Worship?

So, what is worship, to you?

Here's a quote from an article. Check out the whole thing here.

Word, Work, Worship ---
Moving Beyond Sunday-Centric Communities
by Mike Bishop and T Freeman

But what is worship?  After wrestling (with no lack of conflict) with this question for a few months, we decided to perform a few experiments in collaborative worship.  On a Sunday morning in early February, we converged on a small three-bedroom house in an old Lake Worth neighborhood.   Lori, a single woman in our community, had just recently moved in with two other roommates.  The house was probably built in the 50´s or 60´s and had a backyard to match.  It was overgrown with weeds, vines from the neighbor´s yards, and had old lawn equipment and cinder blocks strewn everywhere.  So we arrived, Amber and I with our 18-month-old son Jackson, carrying our weapons of warfare: shovels and rakes, weed-wackers and hedge-clippers, gloves and garden hoes.  Lori and her mom had a pot of coffee brewing and Kim had her delicious coffee cake laid out on the back porch.  Mark, who spends his weekend nights parking cars at a Palm Beach hotel to help support his family, showed up bleak-eyed with his wife Suzanna, two sons Caleb and Silas, and sister-in-law Hope.  Ines, her mother Amanda, and brother Manny, all from the Dominican, arrived just in time to enjoy a simple breakfast on the porch.  This was not a scheduled ?service´, but just a group of friends gathering informally for worship.

To help set the context, after breakfast I read the introduction to Genesis in Peterson´s ?The Message.?  Then I passed the book around the porch and we read the first chapter.  Everyone, even Caleb with his 7-year-old reading skills shining for all to see (and they were quite excellent), read a small part of the Story.  As we began swapping ideas for the yard, it was undeniable what we were there to do ? worship the Creator with shovels, rakes, and clippers. 

Later that afternoon I had a few images stuck in my mind:  Caleb eating oranges on top of Lori's shed with sunlight streaming through the leaves.  Jackson scooping dirt out of an old flowerbed and dumping it all over his shirt.  Mark and T destroying a rogue vine.  Relaxing on the back porch after an impromptu Dominican-style lunch prepared by Ines and Amanda.  Lori's mom telling stories, enjoying the beauty of the day.  And of course, Lori's new back yard.

 

I love this picture. It begins to place real actions on the things we sing and read about on Sunday mornings.

Your turn, what is worship to you?