The Back-Story of Worship (10-13-15)

A group of researchers studying the effects of stress used twin lambs as subjects of an interesting experiment. For the first part of the experiment, one of the lambs was placed in a pen all alone. Electrical pulsing devices were hooked up at several feeding locations in the pen. As the lamb wandered to each feeding station in the enclosure, the researchers gave the lamb a short burst of electrical current. Each time this happened, the lamb would twitch and scamper to another part of the pen. The lamb never returned to the same location once it had been shocked. This was repeated at each feeding station until the frightened lamb stood in the center of the pen shaking uncontrollably. He had no place to run. There were shocks everywhere. Completely overcome and filled with anxiety and stress, the lamb collapsed in a nervous breakdown.

The second part of the experiment involved the first lamb’s twin brother. The researchers put him in the same pen. Only this time they put his mother in the pen with him. Presently, they shocked him at the feeding stations. Like his twin brother, he immediately twitched and ran; only he ran directly to his mother. He snuggled close to her while she grunted softly in his ear.

She apparently reassured him because the lamb promptly returned to the exact spot where he was shocked the first time. The researchers threw the switch again. Again the lamb ran to his mother. Again she snuggled with him and grunted in his ear, and again he returned to the same place. This happened over and over, but as long as there was a safe place, a reference point for the lamb to return to after each shock, he could handle the stress. He was able to cope.

We live in a world that is filled with the shocks of life; stress, anxiety, fear, danger, failure, hurt, pain, brokenness. The list is long. We are surrounded by forces that drain us, damage our dignity, and call into question our identity. Each year seems to bring with it a faster and faster pace of life, more demands on us, more things to do just to keep up and survive, not to mention what it takes to go beyond maintenance to the increasingly impossible dream of actually thriving. There is a profound sense of incompleteness and lack of personal resolution. 

Worship is the “safe place,” that “snuggling reference point,” that brings life into focus. It brings us face to face with a God who loves us and who embraces us no matter what. Worship’s encounter with God fills the sometimes nameless void we feel in this broken, fragmented, hyper-active world. Worship is our greatest human need and calling.

So when the stakes are so high, why would we want to be haphazard about it? Why would we simply throw a service together? Why would we let one person do it all? Why wouldn’t we choose to plan worship, to be intentional about the experience, and to do it all collaboratively, like the very God we’re worshipping?