Why Bow Head, Fold Hands, and Close Eyes for Prayer or Worship?

Come bless the Lord, ye servants of the Lord.

Who stand by night in the house of the Lord.

Bow your heads, close your eyes, and clasp your hands together in the holy place, and bless the Lord.

Wait a minute! You say. That is not how the song goes. If you use a very popular hymnbook for fundamental churches, the song says,

Lift up your voice in the holy place.

Wait a minute! I say. Psalm 134, from which this chorus is taken, says clearly,

Lift up your hands in the sanctuary (holy place).

But we are Baptists! Baptists don’t lift up their hands in worship. We sing–the louder the better.

The first great Baptist distinctive is that the Bible is our only rule for faith and practice. What gives us the right to change the words of scripture because it does not fit our tradition? We criticize the Catholics for doing that.

The truth is that I can find no place in scripture that tells me I must close my eyes when I pray. There might be some good practical reasons for doing it at times, but not biblical reasons. I think I can make the case for bowing my head. The primary words for worship in the Old Testament and New Testament indicate bowing or kneeling in obeisance. The point is that our bodily posture in worship should indicate humility and obedience to God. If we are not kneeling, at least we can bow our heads to express our humility.

There is more of a biblical case for open hands before God in prayer than clasped hands. The open hand indicates the emptiness with which we come to God, and the need for Him to bless us (Psalm 134:2). It also indicates that He sees and knows our deeds, even when we worship Him with unwashed hearts (Isaiah 1:15). I am not talking about hands raised and body swaying back and forth to the music as they do in various concerts today. I am talking about hands extended out in front of us with palms up toward God in reverent prayer.

So why do we fold our hands in prayer? Some have said it was an invention of Sunday School teachers to keep the little ones out of mischief during prayer time. But that would not explain Albrecht Durer’s Praying Hands produced long before the institution of the Sunday School. Others say it was the symbolism used in medieval times when a feudal peasant begged for work from his Lord. Actually, folded hands is an almost universal symbol of begging or pleading and has been used in religions—even Old Testament Judaism– throughout the world and for millennia. It is certainly an appropriate gesture that would accompany taking our petitions to God. It’s not the only one.

Worship throughout scripture includes the mind, heart, emotions, and body. After all, we are human beings. When our minds and hearts are truly engaged, the other parts of us must follow. Consider the ultimate expression of New Testament worship instituted by Christ—the Lord’s Table (1 Corinthians 11). We are instructed to prepare our hearts so we might take it in a worthy manner. The ordinance is mental, as we contemplate the sacrifice that Christ made for us, but it is also physical as we eat the bread and drink the cup. How can it not be emotional as we consider the price paid for our sin and the incredible love God has shown us? The Lord’s Table involves the entire person by Christ’s own design.

We say something with our bodies—not just with our mouths–in our worship. In the mid 1990’s I took a missions trip to Siberia with Ed Nelson, Steve Pettit, Jeff Musgrave, and a number of other preachers and Christian workers. We worshiped with Russian Baptists who had endured great persecution at the hands of the communists. One of the things that profoundly impacted me about the Russian believers was that they would never pray while seated. They either stood or knelt during congregational prayer. To them, it was about reverence.

In “American fundamentalist worship” we consider reverence the defining characteristic of what we do, but I wonder if, in our hearts, we are truly as reverent as we think we are. I am not saying that it is sinful to pray while seated or clasp our hands and close our eyes, when we pray. I am saying that when we make our creature comforts and our traditions (sometimes traditions that are meaningless for us personally) more important than the thoughtful expression of humility or obedience to scripture—well, that is just not reverent worship.

Worship (and reverence) is a big deal to God. Consider the “sleeping” members of the Corinthian church that Paul speaks about in 1 Corinthians 11. Maybe we should take a fresh and honest look at how we worship to determine if what we are doing is pleasing to our Lord.