What is worship?
This question bears many different answers. To some it means the adoration of an object or being. Others feel that it is a time spent at a church service, specifically the music portion of the service, while others feel that it is time reading their religious books or the time that they spent praying.
All of these things are apart of worship.. but what exactly IS worship?
Over the course of this blog... this topic will be tackled, and expanded upon, so please check in for new posts. You are free to leave your replies and responses to this... so as to create a living conversation with regards to this topic.
First off... let's try to define it.
The English word "worship" originates from tow Old English words:
Weorth - tranlated as "worth"
and
Scipe or Ship - referring to something like or "quality." You've seen this used in Modern day English words like friendship, sportsmanship. Breaking the word sportsmanship down... this would seem to be the quality of sport, or the "quality" of being a good sport.
Now relating this to worship... this could be like saying that "worth-ship" is the "quality" of having worth or of something being worthy.... to give worth to.
With regards to the Bible... we worship by declaring that God has worth... and that he is worthy of something. What is he worthy of? Praise and adoration. This is done through our speech, our song, and our life... declaring the goodness of God.
Going to the Hebrew and Greek origins, there are two kinds of words for worship.
The first kind deals with body language. It means that a person peform a humble action of bowing down, kneeling, or to literally put one's face down as a sign of respect or submission.
The other kind means "to serve."
In translations... half of the time worship refered to its meaning of bowing down, and the other to serve, leaving the interpretaion that these concepts and actions are done for God... through humble respect and submssion to His commands.
In a later post, I'll deal with the different ways worship was done in the Bible all the way to its application to the modern day church.
