there being no life, no yearning within, we being
more dead than alive inside. Indeed it is dull and tedious to hold the
posture, if it is not backed up by a quickening life of the spirit.

True worship is a living experience. By and through it we enter into a
life so vital, so vivid, so large and glorious that, by comparison, our
life of ordinary activities seems narrow, dull, dead. By bodily action
the body comes alive. By mental action the mind comes alive. So by
spiritual action the spirit comes alive. Worship is spiritual action. By
means of it our spirits awake, mature, and grow up to God.

All human beings, except those who have been badly damaged by man's
inhumanity to man, are moved to love. Some love animals, some flowers.
Others love the sea or farm lands or mountains. Some love truth, some
love beauty. All of us want and need to love and to be loved by our
families and friends, and we would be happy were we able to love all
people everywhere. To love and be loved is a universal human urge. Is it
any wonder, then, that we are moved to seek God's love? It is inevitable
that we should desire this supreme form of love. The First Commandment
expresses our innermost desire as well as God's will.

There is nothing incredible about our wanting to love and to be loved by
God. The incredible fact is that it can actually happen, does happen.
Some day we will experience it. Then our doubts will end. Then we will
worship God through love of Him.

Here is what two religious men of advanced spiritual development had to
say of their experiences. George Fox wrote, "The word of the Lord came
to me, saying, 'My love was always to thee, and thou art in my love.'
And I was ravished with the sense of the love of God." Brother Lawrence
wrote, "You must know that the benevolent and caressing light of God's
countenance kindles insensibly within the soul, which ardently embraces
it, a divine and consuming flame of love, so rapturous that one puts
curbs upon the outward expression of it."

It is to this divine love that we are called. This is the high promise
of man's life. We are called away from indifference, from meanness,
malice, prejudice and hate. We are called above the earthly loves that
come and go, and are unsure. We are called into the deep enduring love
of God and man and all creation. Worship is a door into that love. Once
we have entered it, our every act is a prayer, our whole life a
continuous worship.

TH