WEEK ONE: WORSHIP

In late October of 2012, Hurricane Sandy devastated the Eastern United States. A category 3 storm at its peak, it was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record as measured by diameter with tropical storm force winds spanning 1,150 miles. It made landfall at Brigantine, New Jersey and inflicted most of its damage in the New Jersey and New York areas.

I had the opportunity to be working with an organization that was on the front line of assisting that area after the storm. I got to see firsthand the devastation that the storm had created: boardwalks picked up and moved back three blocks, houses submerged up to the second-floor level, and some buildings totally washed away. I met some of the people who were directly affected by the damage and heard their stories. Some felt that life as they knew it was over and they weren’t sure how they would start over. Others saw it as an opportunity to begin something new; still others were just happy to have survived.

Now imagine yourself emerging from a life-altering crisis or disaster.  Your world is turned upside down. Everything you've known is gone, and you're staring into the face of an uncertain and scary future.  If this happened to you, what would your initial reaction be? How would you view your future? This was Noah's reality after the flood. His familiar world had vanished, replaced by a landscape that looked vastly different than it did before he entered the ark. In this moment of profound change and potential fear, what would be his first act?

The Bible tells us that his first act was to build an altar of worship to God. Most of our human tendencies would be to (at best) try to figure out a plan to survive… and in the worst case, just complain about the situation. But Noah demonstrated a principle that I believe we all can benefit from even in the darkest times of our lives: create an altar of worship!

Worship will always shift our perspective. When we worship, we are demonstrating our recognition of God, who he is, and what he has done. Worship puts God in his rightful place in our lives and changes our attitude in the process. It is our “thank you” to God for sustaining us, protecting us, and blessing us in spite of the storm we have come through. And it turns our pain into praise.

God doesn’t need our worship, but he does delight in it, and our worship can move God’s heart. Noah worshipped and God responded with a covenant and a promise to never destroy the earth again through a flood. So in the middle of our storms, we can make an altar of worship, putting God in his rightful place. Then, we can approach it expecting God to work, not just in our circumstances but also in our hearts, minds, and spirits, trusting him to sustain us even in the most difficult of times.