BLOG 1/5/18. ADORATION: A MIND-BOGGLING CONCEPT

It is one thing to sit in the worshipping community and sing:

Beautiful Savior! Lord of the nations!

… Glory and honor, praise, adoration,

Now and for-evermore be Thine!

… but how to wrap one’s head around exactly what adoration is, how to define it, and then precisely how we put that into practice is a real stretch! Archbishop William Temple defined it as an essential component of worship when he wrote that worship is: “the surrender of will to His purpose … and all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.”

Another theologian, P. T. Forsyth, wrote: “And if there were a higher stage than all it would be Adoration – when we do not think of favors or mercies to us or ours at all, but at the perfection and glory of the Lord. We feel to His Holy Name what the true artist feels towards any unspeakable beauty.  As Wordsworth says:

I gazed and gazed,

And did not wish her mine.”

We become so accustomed to our familiarity with the ‘language of Zion,’ i.e., the ‘churchy talk’ that we do not often stop and take time to reflect as to exactly what it is, or how it is to be incarnated in my/our life/lives. Where do we adore the Triune God, reflect deeply on Who God is, or what is God’s design by which we reflect his glory?

I am helped by Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of John 1:14, “And the Word (Jesus) became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. And we saw the glory with our own eyes …” Take that to the next step: When we embrace Jesus in our lives, receive him by faith, give him our lives as living sacrifices in order to prove his design … that means that we are to become the agents of adoration, of not only reflecting deeply into what a God-focused life looks like, but actually engaging in our ordinary 24/7 lives as those who radiate the divine image to our neighbors in all love and humility and service … in doing the will of the One we adore.

This is all so impossible in merely human terms, but that is why Jesus gave us the Spirit of glory and of God, so that we may live lives that are, actually, not humanly explainable, i.e., those God-focused lives, those lives “when we do not think of favors or mercies to us our ours at all, but at the perfection and glory of the Lord.”

Being formed in adoration is an on-going discipline, but is at the heart of our lives as true worshippers, … and our Sunday gatherings should always be to refresh and equip us in that calling.