Awe and Worship

My life has taken turns along my journey, now pointing to the end of an earthly sojourn – turns that I did not imagine at the outset of my professional life.  While in high school and not thinking about Christian ministry or the church, I was invited to consider several options.  The music teacher wanted me to go to the Westminster Choir School, and take a degree from Princeton.  One person wanted me to join a group, The Flying Squadron, sponsored by one of the major auto companies that put young people through major departments as something of a modest participant to measure the ability of the young candidate to be trained to enter a department in which the employees would recommend that the young person be hired with the possibility of moving up in the company.  (One day I would be assigned to drive a test car on the speedway which, for a young man, was an attractive factor in the application.)  Other suggestions were made.  My uncle thought of me going into business, and even used me in some of his projects.  Entering my final semester, and chosen by the high school to go through a special program held at the YMCA, I was a factor in a testing program being tried to determine aptitudes for professional life.  In the middle of that program, I became a person of faith in Jesus Christ.  On my own I almost immediately decided that I wanted to be involved for life in some form of Christian ministry.  Three months later I received the results of the lengthy testing, results given to me in conference by a professional evaluator.  He smiled and turned to the last page of the manuscript after I told him I had decided to do something related to Christian ministry.  There in the recommendation paragraph was that I seemed fitted to be either a teacher or a minister.  Ultimately, I decided to be both.  The test served me well in a direction I wanted to take after the spiritual commitment.  It also strengthened a later belief of mine that there is usually more than one indication about life direction in important matters.  One’s inner feelings are well served when there is discovered some external evidence that this is the way to go.  That belief has held up well in the decades of my life.  Given time periods, seeking that includes prayer, we not only make decisions that serve us well, but also afford a conviction of authority that contributes to personal outcomes that are fulfilling.  Only now and then does accident make success in the important matters of our lives.  Commitment to right and truth reigns.

A part of the image of God in human beings is the ability to register awe, a relative of worship.  It is a magnificent human gratification, and in spiritual revelry becomes worship.  It is a gift to humans related to worship, possible in the natural context of life.  We can be awe-struck and that without any waiting for explanation, or cause other than that something touches us that seems to take everything else, near or out of wholly human equations.  It is detected in the discovery of one’s gifts.  There is the awe of seeing a baby being born that we can’t explain even when the mystery of the enclosed womb yields up the embryo from the emersion in fluid to something totally foreign to what applied a minute earlier – dry air: from the nourishment of the umbilical cord to the breast and the child’s will to draw nourishment.  The change is awesome.  Even the Bible notes the point: John 16:21.  The anguish of pregnancy is turned into an awesome joy.  Disciples knew that the departure of Jesus would cause anguish, but his return would bring the awesome spiritual joy to be likened to the awe of childbirth.  I was awestruck on my first views of the Grand Canyon and various other earth wonders.   I didn’t want to talk to the person next to me.  I felt humble.  Why did I not say, This is what happens when erosion gets out of hand – just a larger ditch!  From the air one can detect the pattern of many thousands of years ago when this or that section broke away from the section yonder, a mile or so away.  This story can be multiplied for me from Niagara Falls to the little penguins coming every day from the sea in Australia.  Psychological research has demonstrated how we are affected by genuine awe that makes persons more ethical, less entitled, more cooperative, more team oriented.  The story lengthens.  The researchers felt that awe induces a feeling of being diminished in the presence of something greater than oneself.  This shift focuses away from an individual’s need toward a greater good.  They believed that genuine awe, used for good would improve social behavior.  (Report of Assistant Professor of Psychology, Paul Piff, University of California, Berkeley, California)