They exchanged their glorious God for an image of a bull, which eats grass. – Psalm 106:20

Today's Scripture Reading (June 1, 2022):  Psalm 106

Who, or what, do you serve? The reality of life is not whether you decide to worship, but what it is that becomes the object of your worship. Our objects of worship are many and varied. When I was a teenager, I remember a time when the local sports team was on quite a run and looked like it might be possible for them to win a championship. It wasn't an NFL team making a run for the Super Bowl or an MLB team with aspirations to appear in that season's World Series. It was much more modest than that. The object of my infatuation was a small-town hockey team that was so far down the chain of importance that they were unknown outside of my small town. No one who played in these games would ever play for an NHL team. They were just adults who enjoyed playing hockey and had a modicum of talent; enough talent to win in this league. And I had become a regular in the stands watching them play.

But I remember the night that they were about to be eliminated from their drive toward the championship. And a question occurred to me; what if they lose? I was surprised at the rush of emotion that accompanied the question. Suddenly, it dawned on me that I had been worshiping at the altar of this small-town hockey team, which was an absolutely ridiculous thought even to me. If you are wondering, the team did lose that night, and believe it or not, the world kept spinning, and the sun rose the next morning just as it had every other day. And I went to my classes just as I always had. Nothing changed, except that there were no more hockey games to attend until next year's season began the process all over again.

It is amazing the things that we will worship. And it is not always things that we make an active choice to honor. Objects of worship often sneak up on us, and we don't even realize that we have chosen an altar on which we have decided to pour out our worship. Sports Teams are a common object of worship, as are careers and even just the pursuit of fame or money. These things become the altars where we voluntarily go to worship. The problem is that none of these things are worthy of our worship.

God did many things to prove his worth to Israel. And yet they still turned away from the glory of God, exchanging it for the image of a bull, something that ate grass. It is not an insult to God but rather an insult to those who chose this bull to worship. They had demoted themselves from being a child of the king, becoming content to be a servant of a mindless beast that grazes in the field.

What we choose to worship says more about us than it does about God. And when we reject God in favor of something else, what it says about us is not very complimentary. Paul echoes Psalm 106:20 when he commented that "although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles" (Romans 1:22-23).

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles 17