Praise. It’s weird. It took me a long time to get what praise to God was for me, even after a lifetime of saying in church, “it is right to give him thanks and praise.” The psalms are full of that admonition: praise God. The books about prayer are also full of that admonition. Praise God. I have even heard it from people I like and respect my whole life: praise God.
But what does that mean? It’s easy for me to say praise God, or even say, “God, you are amazing!” which I actually believe in my head. And it’s easy for me to be awestruck by the ocean or a massive waterfall, or even my rural town, blanketed in a new snow. I can feel wonder, and I can feel wonder at God’s work in my life.
But praise?
I am afraid of being fake or sycophantic. I try to have a truly authentic relationship with God, and any praise I say sounded… fake.
CS Lewis comes to our rescue again. In his book, Reflections on the Psalms, he writes about praise:
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
OK. This, I get. Even in the context of feeling really private about my emerging relationship with God. Meeting God, deepening my relationship with him, was hard to keep to myself. I was seeing the blessings of meeting God in the mornings throughout my day, throughout my whole life – and I did want to share them.
I started small, with my kids, reminding them of the wonders around us, and quietly adding that we can thank God for those wonders. I took them outside before bed to marvel at fireflies. We weren’t traveling, but we could look at the majesty of a pine tree, or the wonder of God’s creation in our family dog.
And eventually, I praised louder – even to the point of writing this chapter, in which I can say freely that I feel the deepest wonder and awe when I think about God. And that feels like a gift.
Today: go to the Psalms
Any of the Psalms, really. They model praise better than I can. Just now, I opened randomly to a page with Psalms in the mid-40s (KJV), and was reminded of the different ways to praise: Psalm 46, with its praiseful trust: God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble. Or Psalm 47, with its exuberant, overflowing praise: For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding. Or Psalm 48, with its sense of awe: Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountains of his holiness.
If you don’t know how to praise God today, go to the Psalms. Read them. Let their words be your words for a moment. Let them praise for you. Let their praise of God wash over you and through you, and let yourself feel the wonder of God in that praise.
Spirit Shred 