Just as tenderness turns love into action worship turns wonder into love

The world is full of problems and worry is one of the least helpful responses. Worry spins its wheels and wastes energy on fear. Worry never makes us generous but often suspicious or even cruel. Wonder is nice. Wonder helps us to pay attention to things. But worship is active – praise, reverence, and service. Worship changes things.

Just as tenderness turns love into action worship turns wonder into love. Worship is work. And the world needs our worship. Not merely because God wants for praise, reverence, and service but, more than anything, because the children of God are drowning, tearing each other apart, burying one another in shame and violence. When we don’t commit ourselves to the work of worship (praise, reverence, and service) or when we worship things unworthy of it (riches, honor, and pride) we turn away from love and toward destruction. We must learn to worship lest our wonder turn to fear and our worry turn to reality.

Perhaps nothing so marks the Christian worldview as an absence of worry, a confidence and freedom in the face of all things, even death, because of the promises of God. Because of our share in the faith, hope, and love of Christ we can embrace the leper, we can welcome the stranger, we can love the enemy. Moreover, we can do these difficult things joyfully because in doing them we are worshiping Christ and in worship we are free from worry.

(https://thejesuitpost.org/2015/09/the-work-of-worship/)