From Tim Pyles

   In his book A World of Ideas, author Bill Moyers quotes Jacob Needleman who had witnessed the launch of an Apollo space mission.  The following is part of Needleman’s description of the event.
   “I was an observer at the launch of Apollo 17 in 1975.  It was a night launch, and there were hundreds of cynical reporters all over the lawn, drinking beer, wisecracking and waiting for this 35-story-high rocket.”
   “The countdown came and then the launch.  The first thing you see is this extraordinary orange light, which is just at the limit of what you can bear to look at.  Everything is illuminated with this light.  Then comes this thing slowly rising up in total silence because it takes a few seconds for the sound to come across.  You hear a “WHOOOOOSH!  HHHHHMMMM!”  It enters right into you.”
   “You can practically hear jaws dropping.  The sense of wonder fills everyone in the whole place as this thing goes up and up.  The first stage ignites this beautiful blue flame.  It becomes like a star, but you realize there are humans on it.  And then there’s total silence.”
   “People just get up quietly, helping each other up.  They’re kind.  They open doors.  They look at one another, speaking quietly and interestedly.  There were suddenly moral people because of the sense of wonder, the experience of wonder, had made them moral.”
   I was struck by Needleman’s account of how the launch affected the reporters who were covering the event. It seemed to greatly impact their attitude and their behavior.  The awesomeness of the experience had, in Needleman’s words, “made them moral.”
   How much more should our experience of worship together fill us with awe and affect our attitude toward and treatment of people around us?  Worship not only more closely connects us with God, it also properly orients us to one another.  To paraphrase I John 4:20, how can we love and praise God (whom we have not seen), and then turn around and hate and curse those whom we have seen, those who have been created in the very image of God (James 3:9-10).  Acceptable worship cannot be divorced from a life of holiness, justice, righteousness, mercy, kindness, and humility.  Worship calls us to morality.