Praise and Worship--by Linden Malki

What do we honor and respect in life? Where did everything and everyone come from? If we know God, we know that He is behind everything, and our response should be honor and respect--worship--to God.  He asks for our worship, but not in the sense of demanding it--but in awe and appreciation of Who He is, and He deserves to be taken seriously. We can look at the earliest record we have of worship: Cain and Abel bringing offerings in response to God's provision for them.  Abel brought the best of what he had; Cain didn't; we don't know exactly how it fell short, but when God tried to explain, Cain became angry and took it out on Abel. Cain put his idea of what he was willing to offer above his respect for God and the life of his brother.

As we grow, we are figuring out who we are and what we want, and who are all these other people, and what is all this stuff we see out there.   We hopefully learn to respect that we owe our lives to God, our parents, and other people in our lives.But what is most important to us?  We may put what we, ourselves, want above everything.  We may make our "gods" in our own image, or some other created thing;  and give it  honor and respect that it doesn't deserve, because we want to be in control of it.  If we will not lift our eyes above our own wants, we cannot see God.

The first of the Ten Commandments is that nothing deserves respect and honor above God. A good deal of what God and His spokespeople say throughout the Bible warns of the danger of giving lesser things the honor and worship due to God.  If we will open our eyes and hearts to God, our response will be  our love and appreciation reaching out in praise, prayer, service, generousity,  with all our minds and hearts. 

Praise, in word and song, is mentioned hundreds of times in Scripture, and always as something that we do in response to what we experience of Him. It is not something that He demands but it comes from our not being able to hold back expressing our appreciation of His power and the glory of His creation.  We have a heritage of riches inspired by God, in Scripture, and also two thousand years of glorious music, art and literature by so many people in so many places responding to the wonders of God.  We need to remember to thank God for this heritage, and for being able to come together with His people to praise and worship.

For the Beauty of the Earth,
For the glory of the skies,
 For the love which from our birth.
 Over and around us lies—
Lord of all, to Thee we raise, 
This our hymn of grateful praise. 

  Folliott S. Pierpoint (1864)