Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker… (Psalm 95:6, NIV 1984)
A popular worship song in recent years begins with these words:
We stand and lift up our hands
For the joy of the Lord is our strength,
We bow down and worship him now
How great, how awesome is he!
I have been in a lot of churches where this song, inspiringly written by Chris Tomlin, has been sung with vigor. And here are two things I have noticed:
1. When the first line is sung, nearly everyone follows the words, thrusting their worshipping hands into the air. Even people who aren’t normally given to hand-raising make the effort here.2. When the third line is sung, no one ever bows down.
Now, I get it. There’s a lot more involved physically in bowing down than in raising one’s hands, especially in churches where most of the knees are old and the pews are lined up closely one behind the other. It would be more than a little tricky to get everyone to kneel in the fleeting moments of that line.
All the same, we do well to pay attention to the idea—not because it’s pious or passionate, but because it’s biblical. The line in Psalm 95 that charges us to kneel before our Maker is one example among many we’ll find in our Bible reading. In fact, the Hebrew word for worship embodies the act of prostration, of bowing down before the one being worshipped. For the Israelites, to worship was to bow down.
Why would we do such a thing now, if not in our church rows, then in our times of prayer in more obliging spaces?
We might gain some insight from golf, where many of us “get low” to read the line of a putt. The reason for that is simple: it gives us a better perspective.
So, too, kneeling before God restores our perspective. Consider the next line in Psalm 95:
…for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
You see, we are under God. We are under his care and under his rule. When we dare to kneel, we make a statement to him: “Lord, I know where I live in relationship to you. Though you walk alongside me, you are my King. I want to show you the respect you deserve. I want my eyes and my mind and my heart to remember their place under you.”
—
Jeff Hopper
February 15, 2012
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