Worship.. what it really means.

(51:56)
"And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me."

I was reading the Welcome to Ahmadiyyat, the true Islam book from alislam.org when they said something and it just went *click* in my head.

"worship" has a very different meaning in the Arab world compared to the western Catholic/Christians use of the word.

"Worship is not just to formally bow
to someone, to a thing, or to a god, or whatever. Worship means to
completely divest oneself of all rights of ownership, to admit that these
rights belong to God.*"
*p23

Reading that and actually thinking about it, there's a lot of truth in that for me.
For me growing up "worship" to those in my life meant when it was convenient, at least with the younger generation.

My grandparents are active in their church community as are my great aunts and uncles.
However no one else ever goes, but they all get married in the good ole catholic church and have the kids baptized hoping that those deeds outweigh the fact they never go to church.

My sister and i were briefly shoved into sunday school however it was more about how can we get them out of the house rather then maybe you should find god.
It didn't last.. no one should have expected it to with our childhood.
Tho we always went to church with our grandparents when we were there.
They have a beautiful church.. i was there for an anniversary party years back. Its still beautiful to me.
Buts it holds no religious significance to me at all.

my best friends mother used to try to get me to go to church with them it was just not going to happen. They go on sunday when they are feel up to it but more so when everyone goes - Christmas and Easter.
Again they hope their god sees that and not all the other things they haven't done.

It just didn't make sense to me, religion should be more then that.
If you're going to worship something it is no longer about you, but rather the person/god/object of your worship.
Something i think the west is lacking - they have adapted convenience in as many aspects of life as possible.

While i admit i too have often been one to take the fastest or easiest route for me, I never could do that when it came to religion or anything else that ever meant anything to me.
I don't know if that has just always been my personality or maybe my mental illness or both.
But be that as it may, it's something I would never change about me.

Allah made me how he made and Allah is never wrong.