Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Sheridan Voizzi, and I've titled today's reading Everybody Worships.

I recently visited Athens, Greece.

Walking around its ancient Agora, the marketplace where philosophers taught and Athenians worshipped,

I found altars to Apollo and Zeus, all in the shadow of the Acropolis,

where a statue of the goddess Athena once stood.

We may not bow to Apollo or Zeus today, but society is no less religious.

Everybody worships, novelist David Foster Wallace said,

adding this warning, if you worship money and things, then you will never have enough.

Worship your body and beauty, and you will always feel ugly. Worship your intellect, and you will

end up feeling stupid. Our secular age has its own gods,

and they're not benign. People of Athens, Paul said in Acts chapter 17 while visiting the

Agora, I see that in every way you are very religious. The apostle then described the one true

God as the creator of all, who wants to be known

and who has revealed himself through the resurrection of Jesus.

Unlike Apollo and Zeus, this God isn't made by human hands.

Unlike money, looks or intelligence, worshipping him won't ruin us.

Our God is whatever we rely on to give us purpose and security.

Thankfully, when every earthly God fails us, the one true God is ready to be found.

Today's scripture reading is from Acts chapter 17, verses 24 to 32.

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth

and does not live in temples built by human hands.

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