Some mornings, I read and have to work pretty hard to process what I’ve read. I want to study and grow and learn, but some mornings I just have to make it my goal to get the information into my head and trust that the understanding will dawn eventually.
Other mornings, though, things just jump out at me. Sometimes a lot of things, sometimes a few. But, they literally leap off the page and catch me by surprise.
Then there are days when I’m distracted and struggling for most of the reading, but one little thing still grabs at me. Reading back through my journal, I discovered an entry about one of those days. It was the first day of a new year, but the week was about halfway through — and it had been a long week already. I was tired. My shoulders were stiff with tension. And my head was not really grasping the sense of a new beginning or fresh start of any sort. On days like that, an arbitrary date on a calendar declaring, “New Year!!!” doesn’t really offer a promise that things will be truly new or good or different.
So instead of feeling celebratory, I started the day a wee bit grouchy. And then I read these words:
The psalmist insists that no one anytime, anywhere, praises the Lord alone.
The sentence came from a commentary on the Psalms entitled The Psalms: Jesus’s Prayer Book by Douglas D. Webster. I’d been reading the four-book series all during the previous year as a companion to our church reading plan, which had spent the year working slowly and steadily through the Psalms. The plan ran over just a few days into the new year, and the reading on this particular morning was Psalm 148, a sweeping song of praise encompassing the whole of creation. In fact, it’s hard to read the psalm without thinking of God’s act of creation, especially since another devotional reading that morning centered on Genesis 1.
The whole set of readings offered a powerful reminder of praise, even speaking into my grouchy, tired, cranky morning. Even so, this one little quote took me off guard.
Why?
Because it made me realize that, so often, I choose to approach praise as if I’m alone. Just me trying to figure out how to praise God in the middle of the “whatever” of my life, even if I’m with others who are doing the same thing. We’ve made our relationship with God so personal that it has become individualistic. And that leaves us feeling alone.
But we’re not. Ever. Even if there wasn’t another person around with a heart to praise our Savior, Lord, and Creator, we still wouldn’t be alone because all of creation is constantly praising Him.
We never, ever praise alone.
Whether through the laughter of my family, the songs of a congregation, or the music of wind chimes as the breeze blows around them, praise is everywhere. And I’m a part of it.
I should know this. And, deep inside, I realize I do know it. But I hadn’t really been living the knowledge. Instead, I’d been complaining because I felt alone.
The most beautiful thing about the Spirit’s instruction and illumination of God’s Word is that we become nourished even when the circumstances don’t change. My week was still long. The challenges were still there. But the reminder shifted my focus, as is evident in my journal entry for the next day. How amazing to serve that kind of God.
And to know, we’re never alone.
Not Quite Ordinary 