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, 11th
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,
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I am the second from the right in the front row
|
I joined Blue Birds, the youngest
age group of Camp Fire Girls.
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| 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.
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| This was taken on my 8th birthday. I am next to the teacher on the left. I am still happy. |
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| 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.
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| 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
“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.
