Worship God, The First Law of Camp Fire

Worship God

Do you know what the word “worship” means?

Worship God…the Father. This was the first Law of Camp Fire. It seemed illusive to me as a child and no adult ever told me to “do” it. We would just repeat the Camp Fire Law occasionally in our group. I didn’t know how to worship, but I desired to do so all of my life.

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11^th edition, 2012 page 1445 defines worship as “reverence offered a divine being or supernatural power; also an act of expressing such reverence.” Another definition was, “a form of religious practice with its creed and ritual.”

This latter description is what I would now have thought it meant I suppose… creed and ritual. This certainly was unknown to me as a child had someone even tried to define it for me. Every religion of the world has its own creed and rituals, so which ones were true?

At a very early age I began to desire to search for this truth, although I didn’t know it at the time. About the second grade…age 6-7… I began going to church with whatever neighborhood parent and childhood friend asked me. My own parents didn’t go to church. I felt good there. I like to sun coming through the stained glass windows, and the singing and the stories of Jesus. But of course, someone had to invite and take me there.

About this time while attending Webster Elementary School in Pasadena, California,

I am the second from the right in the front row

 I joined Blue Birds, the youngest age group of Camp Fire Girls.

I am the center girl in front row

I didn’t know about the Camp Fire Laws yet, but in Third grade my parents divorced.

This was taken on my 8th birthday. I am next to the teacher on the left. I am still happy.

I am fourth from left in front row. But no so happy as my parents had divorced.

At the end of my fourth grade school year, I “flew up” into Camp Fire Girls AND my mother, sister and I moved to Pomona, California where she was selling Real Estate.

I continued going to church with whatever friend was going and invited me. The big Baptist Church had a bus that came around to pick us up, so I went along. Now that I look back on it, I suppose my mother must have given permission and got me up to get dressed in time.  The Kingsley Elementary School where I went also had weekly “released time” bible study. This was fun. I to walk somewhere else for an hour or two during the week, so I went to that too.

In Junior High School I began attending church (Dutch Reformed, I think) where my friend, Toni Nash went because I could walk there. They had week day activities for the youth as well as a week-long bible school in the summer. She and I even played a clarinet duet one Sunday. 

I am in row three, fourth from right, and standing behind my friend Toni Nash

Was I a Religious Nut?

Later in life, my mother told me that my father had asked her, “Are you trying to make Beverly into a religious nut?” when he found out I was going to church regularly. She replied, “This is all her I idea, I had nothing to do with it.” I was just a normal kid, doing normal things, but I just loved how I felt on Sunday when I went to church. No I wasn't a religious nut.

In the summer before college, I went to live with my father in Artesia, California because he was going to pay for my first semester there. He served on the Cerritos College Board or a support group, or something because he was a local businessman, owning a Certified Public Accounting firm. There was a Dutch Reformed church there also, and I met neighborhood friends that went to the Wednesday night youth activities, so I went along. I can’t remember attending on Sunday, but  I suppose I must have, but the feeling of “joy or happiness” wasn’t there.

By fall I had stopped attending and during college, I was exposed to many other philosophies and began exploring them all. Mostly they didn’t “feel” right either, until I found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the last semester of College at Cal State Fullerton. It was like coming home. I knew it was true. If you’d asked me then what it meant to worship God, I couldn’t have told you.

Finally I’ve Found an Explanation of the Word Worship

After almost 70 years of life, I’ve finally found the real meaning of the term worship in Daniel L. Belnap’s essay entitled “That I May Dwell Among Them,” found in the 42^nd Annual BYUSidney Sperry Symposium publication “Ascending the Mountain of the Lord” page 12.

“The term worship stems from the English word worth, suggesting that worship is the process by which we recognize the worth of God and in return receive revelation concerning God’s appreciation of our worth. Just as we gain an understanding of these truths through our worship at the temple, so too ancient Israel understood the true nature of man and God, and the manner of the relationship they could have with God by their experiences in the temple and tabernacle.”

Ascending the Mountain of the Lord

This book title means a lot to me. I’ve used this phrase, Ascending the Mountain of the Lord, to describe the significance of a certain petroglyph found very near where I live in Picture Rocks, Arizona. The Native Americans who traverse the area where I live centuries ago, carved or pecked out many pictographs and petroglyphs on a stone outcropping in Saguaro National Park West, located probably three miles from me as a crow flies.

This particular symbol is a spiral and is placed on a rock shaped like a mountain, reflecting a mountain in the distance. Martineau in his book entitled, “The Rocks Begin to Speak,” says the orientation of this spiral means to ascend or climb that mountain over there, to find further instructions.

It seems that my desire to “Worship God” has led me over the years of my life to the knowledge of how to worship, culminating in the joy of temple worship. This desire has also led me how to live my life that I might be worthy of worshiping in His house, the temple, and receiving a witness that God does recognize my worth. I know He loves me perfectly and does reveal his will for me. My life works are a testimony of His guiding hand.