In the preface to his book, ‘The Knowledge of the Holy’ A.W. Tozer writes, “The church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted it for one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic… A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.” 

       The title of the book is from the Hebrew scroll commonly known as the book of Proverbs or the Book of Knowledge for the most part written by King Solomon. It is the later part of a particular proverb omitting the substantive words ‘is understanding’. By this well-thought-out omission (the beginning and end of the proverb are cut off), he is humbly and eloquently saying that we have lost something, that we have lost the essence, the nature of the proverb; in a word, reverence.

       Thus the direct question: what is reverence? Does it have a nature that defines it? Is it merely a word now as meaningless as a rock washed through the years to a speck of sand into the sea of oblivion – still existing yet now inconsequent? Are we looking at a mere facsimile whose likeness to the original is so worn from the familiar becoming unfamiliar? We see the word but grasp illusively for its meaning.