Day 64

Numbers 4:1-5:31; Mark 12:18-37; Psalm 48:1-14; Proverbs 10:26

A Call for Full Contact Worship

If worship were a sport, it would be “full contact.” It involves all the senses, which is why Numbers talks about fragrant incense and holy oil and holy water. It’s also why Numbers insists you can’t claim to love God with your mind, but another person’s spouse with your body.

Because worship is “full contact,” it means affirming Jesus, loving all of God with all of what you are – and loving your neighbor as yourself. Because worship is “full contact,” the Psalmist could point to God’s beautiful city and say, “Walk about Zion … count her towers” (48:12). The earthly city of Jerusalem embodied a promise that one day there will be a new heavens and a new earth, and its jewel will be a New Jerusalem.

Worship is “full contact” because God has made full contact with us by sending His Son in our very flesh – a promise that by His life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return, He will make “all things new.”

In the meantime, the charge for us is to heed today’s proverb: we’ve been sent to live and tell the story of God’s resolve to reclaim the whole of His creation. This is not a day for drawing back, but for trusting that the One who sends us will go before us.

Dr. Reggie Kidd