Worship can be summed up in a single word: love. What else could love mean except to recognize the ultimate value of a thing, to delight and take pleasure in it, and to give one’s self to it in loyal trust? To worship a thing is to love it. Consequently, it is neither surprising nor accidental that the Great Commandment follows and derives from the Shema. The worship that the Shema implies is precisely the love that the Great Commandment requires.

—Kevin Bauder in The Artistic Theologian