The Value of Worship

Cautiously and carefully the student came up holding a piece of paper and says, “Rev. O, would you mind reading this? I wrote this after the sermon last week, and I wanted to share.”

Sometimes you can wonder whether the energy, thought and time putting into our worship times has impact. Certainly we believe the divine deserves the commitment, but we can wonder does it have an impact on the lives of the students with whom we share this commitment. If we are not impacting human hearts, then the exercise is a narcissistic show of piety. The Christian scriptures contain many quotes of the divine expectation not be of pietistic sacrifice, but of a sacrifice of compassion and love. So, we wonder, what is the point of our worship.

And then, on a day of frustration and exhaustion, it comes to you as two typed staple pages given to you with trembling hands: a manifesto of a heart strangely warmed, a story of a life committed to the compassion of its neighbor, a poem of the fullness of love truly known. You realize then how little has been committed to such great a cause.

Rev. Bryant Oskvig , Protestant Chaplaincy Director