Divine Worship Quotes & Sayings

Without doubt the emphasis in Christian teaching today should be on worship. There is little danger that we shall become merely worshipers and neglect the practical implications of the gospel. No one can long worship God in spirit and in truth before the obligation to holy service becomes too strong to resist. Fellowship with God leads straight to obedience and good works. That is the divine order and it can never be reversed. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

To you, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism look very different, but to me they look the same. Many of you would say that something like Buddhism doesn't even belong on the list, since it doesn't link salvation to divine worship, but to me this is just a quibble. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism all perceive human beings as flawed, wounded creatures in need of salvation, and all rely fundamentally on revelations that spell out how salvation is to be attained, either by departing from this life or rising above it. — Daniel Quinn

If the Holy Spirit is a person, and a Divine Person, and we do not know Him as such, then we are robbing a Divine Being of the worship and the faith and the love and the surrender to Himself which are His due. — R.A. Torrey

No, take more! What may be sworn by, both divine and human, Seal what I end withal! This double worship, Where [one] part does disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom, Cannot conclude but by the yea and no Of general ignorance - it must omit Real necessities, and give way the while To unstable slightness. Purpose so barr'd, it follows Nothing is done to purpose. Therefore beseech you - You that will be less fearful than discreet; That love the fundamental part of state More than you doubt the change on't; that prefer A noble life before a long, and wish To jump a body with a dangerous physic That's sure of death without it - at once pluck out The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick The sweet which is their poison. Your dishonor Mangles true judgment, and bereaves the state Of that integrity which should become't; Not having the power to do the good it would, For th' ill which doth control't. — William Shakespeare

Our thoughts and perceptions are our god.
Our true inner awareness is the purest temple,
where I worship every day for the divine. — Debasish Mridha

Nothing should be worshipped [sic] that has form or is individuated. The universal Divine Life is alone to be worshipped. There is no colorless pantheism in this concept; for the God of each man is one with the universal God: the Conqueror obtains the Universe, not by being absorbed and obliterated by it, but by transcending the limitations of his individual consciousness and partaking of the universal Divine Consciousness. As an individual he loses nothing but his imperfections, but he gains the All, the "Origin and the Perfection." And this is Seership, which is not "prophecy," "second sight" or sense-perception on any plane of consciousness, but is Direct Cognition of Reality. — James Morgan Pryse

Reverential human acts of submission and homage before the divine Sovereign, in response to his gracious revelation of himself, and in accordance with his will. — Dan Block

The cure to combat the three Ss- stress, strain, and speed- can be found in three Ws- the work of devoted practice, the wisdom that comes of understanding the self and the world, and worship because ultimately surrendering to what we cannot control allows the ego to relax and lose the anxiety of its own infinitesimally small self in the infinitude of the divine. — B.K.S. Iyengar

There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we can be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs, but deep within, behind the scenes at a profounder level we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings. — Thomas Raymond Kelly

If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship, - a boundless worship and belief in some hero of your soul, - if ever you have so loved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations have gone down like drift-wood before a river flooded with new rain from heaven, so that you even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast your whole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering before the feet of another, and all for nothing, - if you awoke bitterly betrayed and deceived, still give thanks to God that you have had one glimpse of heaven. The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that the noblest capability of your eternal inheritance has been made known to you; treasure it, as the highest honor of your being, that ever you could so feel, -that so divine a guest ever possessed your soul. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The city Babel is the Ham-like man, who builds this city upon the earth; the tower is his self-chosen god, and divine worship. All reason-taught, from the school of this world, are the master-builders of this tower. — Jakob Bohme

O brief, bright smile of summer! O days divine and dear The voices of winter's sorrow Already we can hear. And we know that the frosts will find us, And the smiling skies grow rude, While we look in the face of Beauty, And worship her every mood. — Celia Thaxter

The Christian's instincts of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God. But this is knowledge which Christians today largely lack: and that is one reason why our faith is so feeble and our worship so flabby ... When a person in the church, let alone the person in the street, uses the word God, the thought is rarely of divine majesty. — J.I. Packer

The act of divine worship is the inestimable privilege of man, the only created being who bows in humility and adoration. — Hosea Ballou

Nearly all ancient peoples worshiped sex in some form and ritual, and not the lowest people but the highest expressed their worship most completely [ ... ]. The sexual character and functions of primitive deities were held in high regard, not through any obscenity of mind, but through a passion for fertility in women and in the earth. Certain animals, like the bull and the snake, were worshiped as apparently possessing or symbolizing in a high degree the divine power of reproduction.
The snake in the story of Eden is doubtless a phallic symbol, representing sex as the origin of evil, suggesting sexual awakening as the beginning of the knowledge of good and evil, and perhaps insinuating a certain proverbial connection between mental innocence and bliss. — Will Durant

It is a special part of the divine worship that we owe to God, to be content in a Christian way, as has been shown to you. — Jeremiah Burroughs

The great biblical tradition says that loving God and loving one's neighbor are not two separate actions but two sides of the same action. It was the prophet Amos who bore witness to the fact that divine worship is nothing but human justice being offered to God and human justice is nothing but divine worship being lived out. — John Shelby Spong

What is the pattern of worship that best conveys the richness of divine grace, faithfully interprets the gospel in our modern world and helpfully consolidates the body of Christ? — Geoffrey W Bromiley

For nothing so much disturbs the mind, though it be done for some beneficial purpose, as to innovate and introduce strange things, and most of all when this is done in matters relating to divine worship and the glory of God. — Saint John Chrysostom

Learn to worship God as the God who does wonders, who wishes to prove in you that He can do something supernatural and divine. — Andy Murray

Worship is invoking the divinity within. Meditation is awareness of divinity within. Enlightenment is realization of divinity within. Nirvana is being the divinity — Rashmit Kalra

A key problem for Islam today can be summarized in three simplifying sentences: Christians worship a man made divine. Jews worship a book. And Muslims worship both. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In too many households prayer is neglected. Parents feel that they have no time for morning and evening worship. They cannot spare a few moments to be spent in thanksgiving to God for his abundant mercies - for the blessed sunshine and the showers of rain, which cause vegetation to flourish, and for the guardianship of holy angels. They have no time to offer prayer for divine help and guidance and for the abiding presence of Jesus in the household. They go forth to labor as the ox or the horse goes, without one thought of God or heaven. They have souls so precious that rather than permit them to be hopelessly lost, the Son of God gave his life to ransom them; but they have little more [144] appreciation of his great goodness than have the beasts that perish. — Ellen G. White

Frankly, I am quite tired of those who tout Christianity as a way to stop smoking or drinking or break wild habits of the world. Is that all Christianity is, to keep us from some bad habit? Of course, regeneration will clean us up, and the new birth will make a man right. If that is what Christianity is all about, what about the person whose life is not that bad? The purpose of God in redemption is to restore us again to the divine imperative of worship. We were created to worship, but sin destroyed that ability. Jesus Christ, on the cross, redeemed us and brought us back to the place where we now can worship and have fellowship with God Almighty. My clean life is a by-product of my conversion. My life may have pointed out to me that I needed a drastic change, but that is not the purpose for which I was converted. The essence of conversion is to bring me into a right relationship with God and have fellowship with Him. — A.W. Tozer

The Blessed Sacrament is the first and supreme object of our worship. We must preserve in the depths of our hearts a constant and uninterrupted profound adoration of this precious pledge of Divine Love. — Mary Euphrasia Pelletier

With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The — A.W. Tozer

GLOBAL GOD WORSHIP -PRAY TO GOD SUPRIME WILL CHANGE OUR LIFE DRIVE DRAFT MORE THAN WE WANT.BECAUSE THIS WORLD IS GOD DESIGNED GLOBAL GAME.THE UNIVERSE IS ONE COMPUTER.GOD DEVISED ALL SOULSFUTURE DIVINE DRAFTS BY AN WONDERFULL SAFT-WARE.EVER THING IS PRE FIXED AND PRE DETERMINED. WE ALL HAVE TO OBAY TO GOD AS PER OUR FORE FATHERS FASHION AND TREDITIONAL HOMELY STYLE OF GOD PRAYING EVERY DAY.THE GOD PRAY AS PER OUR OWN FAMILY STYLE WILL CHANGE OUR FATE MORE THAN WE WANT. THATS TRUE.SO.,MY DEAR GLOBIANS.,IN THE MULTI BILLION TRILLIONS OF DAILY EXPANDING IMAGINARY JUGGLARY GLOBAL GAME PLEASE TRY TO HABITUATE TODAY ONWARDS TO PRAY GOD AND OUR FATHER AND MOTHER TO RECEIVE THEIRE BLESSINGS AT EVERY DAY EARLY IN THE MORNING AS PER OUR HOMELY STYLE FOR BETTER FATEFULL FUTURE OF GLOBAL GRAND SUCCESSFULL LIFE LEADING IN ALL GLOBAL MOVINGS. — Various

Eucharistic worship is not so much worship of the inaccessible transcendence as worship of the divine condescension, and it is also the merciful and redeeming transformation of the world in the human heart — Pope John Paul II

This gathered worship, as Quakers call it, is not only absence of noise. Gathered worship springs from the reverent, silent expectation that God will come among the people. The silence deepens as we feel ourselves drawn beautifully to God and each other. Our hearts and souls burst with thanksgiving-a thanksgiving best expressed by silence. Silence growing from awe is the natural human response to hints of the Divine. — J. Brent Bill

It is Satan's constant effort to misrepresent the character of God, the nature of sin, and the real issues at stake in the great controversy. His sophistry lessens the obligation of the divine law and gives men license to sin. At the same time he causes them to cherish false conceptions of God so that they regard Him with fear and hate rather than with love. The cruelty inherent in his own character is attributed to the Creator; it is embodied in systems of religion and expressed in modes of worship. — Ellen G. White

A woman has her Juno, just as a man has his Genius; they are names for the sacred power, the divine spark we each of us have in us. My Juno can't "get into" me, it is already my deepest self. The poet was speaking of Juno as if it were a person, a woman, with likes and dislikes: a jealous woman.
The world is sacred, of course, it is full of gods, numina, great powers and presences. We give some of them names
Mars of the fields and the war, Vesta the fire, Ceres the grain, Mother Tellus the earth, the Penates of the storehouse. The rivers, the springs. And in the storm cloud and the light is the great power called the father god. But they aren't people. They don't love and hate, they aren't for or against. They accept the worship due them, which augments their power, through which we live. — Ursula K. Le Guin

You may have the best vegetables, you may be the most capable cook, but, if the copper vessel in which you prepare the vegetable soup is not tinned, the concretion you cook will be highly poisonous! So 'tin' your heart with truth, right conduct, peace and divine love; it will then become a vesssel fit for repeating holy name or symbols, meditation, religious vows, pilgrimage, ritualistic worship and the other dishes that you prepare in it. — Sathya Sai Baba

His blessed count'nance; here I could frequent, With worship, place by place where he voutsaf'd Presence Divine, and to my Sons relate; On this Mount he appeerd, under this Tree Stood visible, among these Pines his voice I heard, here with him at this Fountain talk'd: So — John Milton

Throughout her life, Highsmith looked for women whom she could worship. Sex was far from the most important factor in any relationship; rather, it was this near-divine quality for which she yearned. — Andrew Wilson

I've learned much from the land of many gods and many ways to worship. From Buddhism the power to begin to manage my mind, from Jainism the desire to make peace in all aspects of life, while Islam has taught me to desire goodness and to let go of that which cannot be controlled. I thank Judaism for teaching me the power of transcendence in rituals and the Sufis for affirming my ability to find answers within and reconnecting me with the power of music. Here's to the Parsis for teaching me that nature must be touched lightly, and the Sikhs for the importance of spiritual strength ... And most of all, I thank Hinduism for showing me that there are millions of paths to the divine. — Sarah Macdonald

The Rosicrucians teach that all great religions have been given to the people among whom they are found, by Divine Intelligences who designed each system of worship to suit the needs of the race or nation to whom it was given. A primitive people cannot respond to a lofty and sublime religion, and vice versa. — Max Heindel

We worship God, but have no faith in the workings of God's laws of love. The world awaits the living of the law of love, which will reach the divine within all human beings and transform them. — Peace Pilgrim

That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners. — G.K. Chesterton

The place where music and worship meet is like a divine mystery of sorts. — Temi Peters

Worship is the highest act of which a person is capable. It not only stretches us beyond all the limits of our finite selves to affirm the divine depth of mystery and holiness in the living and eternal God, but it opens us at the deepest level of our being to an act which unites us most realistically with our fellow people. — Samuel Henry Miller

I have to seek God beauty. Because isn't my internal circuitry wired to seek out something worthy of worship? . True Beauty worship, worship of Creator Beauty Himself. God is present in all moments, but I do not deify the wind in the pines, the snow falling on the hemlocks, the moon over harvested wheat. Pantheism, seeing the natural world as divine, is a very different thing than seeing divine God present in all things . Nature is not God but God revealing the weight of Himself, all His glory, through the looking glass of nature. — Ann Voskamp

So many of our prayers are self-centered grocery lists of personal cravings that have no bigger agenda than to make our lives a little more comfortable. They tend to treat God more as our personal shopper than a holy and wise Father-King. Such prayers forget God's glory and long for a greater experience of the glories of the created world. They lack fear, reverence, wonder, and worship. They're more like pulling up the divine shopping site than bowing our knees in adoration and worship. They are motivated more by awe of ourselves and our pleasures than by a heart-rattling, satisfaction-producing awe of the Redeemer to whom we are praying. — Paul David Tripp

Prayer is a divine worship due to none but God the Father, Son, and Spirit.9 — Douglas Bond

Dance with your sacred rhythm. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Christian communal worship is the glorification of God and the sanctification of humanity as a divine-human event where God offers transformation and healing to help people become more fully what God created them to be and do. God breathes (inhales) and gathers in individual Christians to heal, transform, and renew them as the body of Christ to breathe (exhale) them out to continue the ministry of the incarnation that participates in the kingdom of God more fully coming. The consummation of the kingdom will come and God will be all in all. — Brent Peterson

Even as he would be guilty of falsehood who would, in the name of another person, proffer things that are not committed to him, so too does a man incur the guilt of falsehood who, on the part of the Church, gives worship to God contrary to the manner established by the Church or divine authority, and according to ecclesiastical custom. — Thomas Aquinas

Too fair to worship, too divine to love. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

It was in those first couple months that I fell in love with liturgy, the ancient pattern of worship shared mainly in the Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox, and Episcopal churches. It felt like a gift that had been caretaken by generations of the faithful and handed to us to live out and caretake and hand off. Like a stream that has flowed long before us and will continue long after us. A stream that we get to swim in, so that we, like those who came before us, can be immersed in language of truth and promise and grace. Something about the liturgy was simultaneously destabilizing and centering; my individualism subverted by being joined to other people through God to find who I was. Somehow it happened through God. One specific, divine force. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Within biblical theology it remains the case that the one living God created a world that is other than himself, not contained within himself. Creation was from the beginning an act of love, of affirming goodness of the other. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good; but it was not itself divine. At its height, which according to Genesis 1 is the creation of humans, it was designed to REFLECT God, both to reflect God back to God in worship and to reflect God into the rest of creation in stewardship. But this image-bearing capacity of humankind is not in itself the same thing as divinity. Collapsing this distinction means taking a large step toward a pantheism within which there is no way of understanding, let alone addressing, the problem of evil. — N. T. Wright

A life of kindness is the primary meaning of divine worship. — Emanuel Swedenborg

It is not the sanctuary that is in danger; it is civilization. It is not infallibility that may go down; it is personal rights. It is not the Eucharist that may pass away; it is freedom of conscience. It is not divine justice that may evaporate; it is the courts of human justice. It is not that God may be driven from His throne; it is that men may lose the meaning of home; For peace on earth will come only to those who give glory to God! It is not the Church that is in danger, it is the world! — Fulton J. Sheen

There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine. — Karen Armstrong

The sacred rites, although not instituted specifically for proving the truth of the dogmas of the Catholic Faith incontrovertibly, are effectively the living voice of Catholic Truth, the oft-sounded expression of it. For that very reason the true Church of Christ, even as she shows great zeal to guard inviolate those forms of divine worship - since they are hallowed and are not to be changed - sometimes grants or permits something novel in the performance of them in certain instances. This she does especially when they are in conformity with their venerable antiquity. — Pope Leo XIII

Divine worship means the same thing where time is concerned, as the temple where space is concerned. "Temple" means ... that a particular piece of ground is specially reserved, and marked off from the remainder of the land which is used either for agriculture or habitation ... Similarly in divine worship a certain definite space of time is set aside from working hours and days ... and like the space allotted to the temple, is not used, is withdrawn from all merely utilitarian ends. — Josef Pieper

This is our sacred land, Bharat, a land whose glories are sung by the
Gods, a land visualized by Mahayogi Aurobindo as the living manifestation
of the Divine Mother of the universe, the Jaganmaataa, the Aadishakti,
the Mahaamaayaa, the Mahaadurgaa, Who has assumed concrete form to
enable us to see Her and worship Her,...a land worshipped by all our seers and
sages as Maatrubhoomi, Dharmabhoomi, Karmabhoomi and Punybhoomi, a
veritable Devabhoomi and Mokshabhoomi" - — Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar

Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy - by one, or more, or all of these - and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details. — Swami Vivekananda

What good is all our busy religion if God isn't in it? What good is it if we've lost majesty, reverence, worship-an awareness of the divine? What good is it if we've lost a sense of the Presence and the ability to retreat within our own hearts and meet God in the garden? — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Where those two energies [male and female energies] intersect, all creativity is possible. We already have divine creative energy within us. And what is the most powerful of these energies? The energy that patriarchy and misogyny constantly try to repress. The divine female sexual energy. The creative energy of the female. That is why I worship divine sexual female energy. — Russell Brand

It is possible to pray in such a way that one does not transcend the world, in such a way that the divine is degraded to a functional part of the workaday world ... then it is no longer devotion to the divine, but an attempt to master it. — Josef Pieper

Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man toward God. These duties are, internally, love and adoration: externally, devotion and obedience; therefore provision should be made for maintaining divine worship as well as education. But each one has a right to entire liberty as to religious opinions, for religion is the relation between God and man; therefore it is not within the reach of human authority. — Gouverneur Morris

Men who scorn the idea of submission to the divine Will and are outraged by the notion of a God who requires submission are among the first to demand total submission to the process in which we are involved and seem to attach a kind of moral imperative to willing participation in it. Any other attitude, so they say, is reactionary or escapist or anti-social. Perhaps, after all, they have found a divinity to worship; and, if they have, the only charitable comment must be: God help them! — Charles Le Gai Eaton

Isn't atheism just another religion?' No, it isn't. Atheism has no creeds, rituals, holy book, absolute moral code, origin myth, sacred spaces or shrines. It has no sin, divine judgment, forbidden words, prayer, worship, prophecy, group privileges, or anointed 'holy' leaders. Atheists don't believe in a transcendent world or supernatural afterlife. Most important, there is no orthodoxy in atheism. — Dan Barker

Was the real Jesus of history one and the same as the Christ of faith whom we read about in the New Testament and worship in the church? Was Jesus really raised from the dead? Is he really the divine Lord of lords? — John Clayton

Music is soul of the spirit. — Lailah Gifty Akita

We build deep and loving family relationships by doing simple things together, like family dinner and family home evening and by just having fun together. In family relationships love is really spelled t-i-m-e, time. Taking time for each other is the key for harmony at home. We talk with, rather than about, each other. We learn from each other, and we appreciate our differences as well as our commonalities. We establish a divine bond with each other as we approach God together through family prayer, gospel study, and Sunday worship. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Music enables an ability of divine expression transcending any words. — Temi Peters

here is nothing which any way pertains to the the worship of God left to the determination of human laws, besides the mere circumstances, which neither have any holiness in them, forasmuch as they have no other use and praise in sacred than which have in civil things, nor yet were particularly determinable in Scripture. — George Gillespie

By liberty of conscience, we understand not only a mere liberty of the mind, in believing or disbelieving this or that principle or doctrine; but the exercise of ourselves in a visible way of worship, upon our believing it to be indispensably required at our hands, that if we neglect it for fear of favor of any mortal man, we sin and incur divine wrath. — William Penn

Archeological and literary evidence makes it self-evident that different tribes, in different regions, at different times focused on different divine beings in their practice and worship. — C. Nico

[Theology] may be defined, the doctrine or science of the truth which is according to godliness, and which God has revealed to man that he may know God and divine things, may believe on Him and may through faith perform to Him the acts of love, fear, honour, worship and obedience, and obtain blessedness from Him through union with Him, to the divine glory ... On this account, theology is not a theoretical science or doctrine, but a practical one, requiring the action of the whole man, according to all and each of it's parts
an action of the most transcendent description, answerable to the excellence of the object as far as the human capacity will permit. — James Arminius

Above all, don't overestimate your own power as an individual. Founders are important not because they are the only ones whose work has value, but rather because a great founder can bring out the best work from everybody at his company. That we need individual founders in all their peculiarity does not mean that we are called to worship Ayn Randian "prime movers" who claim to be independent of everybody around them. In this respect Rand was a merely half-great writer: her villains were real, but her heroes were fake. There is no Galt's Gulch. There is no secession from society. To believe yourself invested with divine self-sufficiency is not the mark of a strong individual, but of a person who has mistaken the crowd's worship - or jeering - for the truth. The single greatest danger for a founder is to become so certain of his own myth that he loses his mind. But an equally insidious danger for every business is to lose all sense of myth and mistake disenchantment for wisdom. — Anonymous

I honor the divine on a daily basis, but I want to know that the greatest magick in my life is living authentically with what I have and can do. — Thomm Quackenbush

You the human are the highest temple of God. I would rather worship you, than worship any temple, image or book. — Abhijit Naskar

Eros, Lord Phanes, Protogonus, god of love, of Chaos, Gaea, and Tartarus, be merciful: bless these remains of a bear which Hadrian slew on His steed and sacrifices for You; and in consideration of His noble worth true Thy shaft through the smooth purpled loins of that One divine Youth whom He shall love and worship in Truth - forever! ~ Hadrian, ca. 125 CE — E. Llewellyn

I believe that every blessing, every breakthrough, every miracle traces back to the prayers that were prayed by you or for you. One of the greatest moments in eternity will be the day God peels back the space-time curtain and unveils His sovereignty by connecting the divine dots between our prayers and His answers. That infinite web of prayer crisscrosses every nation, every generation. And when God finally reveals His strange and mysterious ways, it will drop us to our knees in worship. We will thank Him for the prayers He did answer. We'll also thank Him for the prayers He didn't answer because we'll finally understand why. And we'll thank Him for the answered prayers we weren't even aware of. — Mark Batterson

Today, religion is systematized, formalized group worship. It's packaged. We don't live the divine any longer, we only hear or read about it. — Alan Joshua

If you have ever come upon a grove that is thick with ancient trees rising far above their usual height and blocking the view of the sky with their cover of intertwining branches, the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot, and your wonder at the unbroken shade in the midst of open space will create in you a sense of the divine (numen). Or, if a cave made by the deep erosion of rocks supports a mountain with its arch, a place not made by hands but hollowed out by natural causes into spaciousness, then your mind will be aroused by a feeling of religious awe (religio). We venerate the sources of mighty rivers, we build an altar where a great stream suddenly bursts forth from a hidden source, we worship hot springs, and we deem lakes sacred because of their darkness or immeasurable depth. (Seneca the Younger, Letters 41.3) — Valerie M. Warrior

The Magi bring treasures and gifts fitting for a king. Hearts that are seeking, that are open will be overjoyed at finding, will fall down and worship. Deceptive and scheming minds will be frustrated, left out of the divine communication. Worship leaves us more open and receptive to God, — Ron Oltmanns

In the Quranic vision there is no dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, the religious and the political, sexuality and worship. The whole of life was potentially holy and had to be brought into the ambit of the divine. The aim was tawhid (making one), the integration of the whole of life in a unified community, which would give Muslims intimations of the Unity which is God. — Karen Armstrong

If the Lord is to be Lord, worship must have priority in our lives. The divine priority is worship first, service second. — Richard J. Foster