When I was a young Christian, I heard people in worship services and prayer meetings using the words, “Praise the Lord,” constantly. I was a Pentecostal at that point. We often talked about the importance of praising God; we were aware that God is worthy of praise, but many of us weren’t really sure how to go about it, so we found ourselves just repeating words like “Praise God,” “Praise the Lord,” and “Praise be to Jesus,” over and over again. I was in a discussion a few years ago, and I made the point that we don’t have an adequate language for praise and worship, that we need help in this area. One of the women there, a pastor’s wife, objected to this very strongly. She asserted that we only need to give people an opportunity, that the church has been guilty of stifling worship by not giving people enough freedom to praise God. According to her view, we know instinctively how to praise God. We just need to be given a chance to try. But that’s not been my experience. We don’t know how to praise God adequately, because we don’t know Him very well.
There’s also the problem that praise has been cheapened in our culture. Thomas Merton saw this problem in the 1950's: “Do we know what it means to praise? To adore? To give glory? Praise is cheap today. Everything is praised. Soap, beer, toothpaste, clothing, mouthwash, movie stars, all the latest gadgets which are supposed to make life more comfortable–everything is constantly being ‘praised.’... Praise has become empty. Nobody really wants to use it. Are there any superlatives left for God? They have all been wasted on foods and quack medicines. There is no word left to express our adoration of Him who alone is Holy, who alone is Lord” (Praying the Psalms, p. 10). If this was true in the 1950's the situation is far worse now, with the increased pervasiveness of advertising and entertainment. So, when we begin praising God, there are two things working against us: we don’t really know God that well, so we don’t have that much to say (other than simply repeating “praise the Lord” over and over); and our language has been cheapened and trivialized, so that if we’re not careful, our worship and praise will also be shallow and trivial.
One Pentecostal pastor in the 1970's saw this problem. When people in his church said “praise the Lord,” he’d ask them why they were praising God. Were they just reciting empty words, or did they have something specific in mind? In prayer meetings, he started encouraging people to pray with their eyes open, to look for concrete things they could praise God for. He encouraged them to be attentive to God’s creation and the things He was doing, and to begin praising Him throughout the day in response to things they saw. That’s what the author of Psalm 104 is doing. He’s praising with his eyes open, praising God in response to the creation.
Notice how he begins. He says, in verse 1: “Praise the Lord, O my soul. O Lord, my God, you are very great.” He stirs himself up, reminds himself that praising God is something he needs to be doing. “Praise the Lord, O my soul.” Then he begins by offering this short praise: “O Lord, my God, you are very great.” I’ve been in prayer meetings and worship services that never get any further than this. But the psalmist doesn’t stop there. He doesn’t just repeat the same words over and over. He could do that. There’s nothing wrong with praising God over and over for the same thing. Psalm 136 is very repetitive. The phrase, “His love endures forever,” is repeated in the second half of each verse. I’ve often heard people criticize praise choruses because they’re repetitive. But we need to be careful. I don’t know many choruses that are more repetitive than Psalm 136. Repetition can be of great value. It enables our praise to sink more deeply into our hearts, so that the praise we’re offering is more truly a part of us. Remember that in worship two things are happening: we’re offering something to God, and we’re being transformed in the process. Repetition is an important element in meditation. We repeat the truth over and over, to let it sink more deeply into our souls. So if the basic content of a chorus is good, there’s nothing wrong with repeating it long enough to allow it to get past the surface of our minds.
There are also times when we’re so filled with wonder at the presence of God that we can’t get beyond “O Lord, my God, you are very great.” There are times when hushed silence is the only way to respond. There are times when we can’t get any further than to say, “O God,” over and over. When God pours out His Spirit, we will often find ourselves humbled and unable to speak.
So, repeating the words, “praise the Lord” over and over can be a sign that God is pouring out His Spirit in an exceptional way, so that we are hushed and barely able to speak in His presence; or it can be a tool we’re using for meditation, seeking to allow the words “praise the Lord” to become more truly the cry of our hearts; or it can be a sign that we feel the need to praise but can’t think of anything else to say. This is the one we want to resist; and Psalm 104 can help us get beyond this kind of empty, meaningless repetition. Just as an aside, it’s good in our worship to include music that has more content, like some of the great hymns of the Church, and at the same time to use choruses that focus on a smaller amount of truth. The psalter includes both Psalm 136, with its repetitive approach, and Psalm 104. We need both kinds of praise. We need to fill our minds with thoughts of God’s greatness, and we need to pause and dwell on specific things about Him, giving ourselves time to wait on Him and be attentive to His presence.
The psalmist, having offered some initial words of praise in verse 1, goes on to celebrate the wonder of God’s creation. In verses 2-23 he recites, in God’s presence, the greatness of the creation. He’s praising with his eyes open. He’s looking around at the things he can see, the created world, and is remembering that God created all of it.
The first step in learning to praise God is paying attention. Listen to these words that were originally spoken to ministerial students at Yale Divinity School: “Just look for a moment at our daily routine. In general we are very busy people. We have many meetings to attend, many visits to make, many services to lead. Our calendars are filled with appointments, our days and weeks filled with engagements, and our years filled with plans and projects. There is seldom a period in which we do not know what to do, and we move through life in such a distracted way that we do not even take the time and rest to wonder if any of the things we think, say, or do are worth thinking, saying, or doing” (Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, p 10). We move through life in a state of distraction. We’re too busy to stop and pay attention. An important first step in learning to praise God our Creator is learning to stop ourselves. Slow down, and pay attention to the changing of the seasons. Take note of what is going on around you. See how many different shades of green you can identify at this time of the year. Notice all the different bird calls you can hear in the morning. Look at the stars at night, and try to take in something of the vastness of the universe. Slow down and enjoy the wonder of this world that God has created. The psalmist is praising God for all these things, but he doesn’t start with praise. He starts by paying attention, by taking delight in all the different kinds of things God has put into His world.
Several years ago we visited Letchworth State Park in New York, a park with some beautiful waterfalls. We walked up one trail and climbed to a railroad bridge that hangs high above the top of the falls. That part of it wasn’t my idea, but I went along and endured the feeling of dizziness as I felt the bridge moving around in the wind. On the way down, we walked on a trail that passes right next to the waterfall, and I noticed a young woman in front of us listening to a Walkman. She was walking along the trail, seemingly oblivious to all that was around her. She was shutting out all the beauty and wonder of that place. And, a few minutes before, I had done the same thing, saying to myself over and over while I was on the bridge, “I hate it up here.” We live in a noisy society, and our interior lives are also filled with constant noise. We’d do well to intentionally stop ourselves, turn off our radios and TV’s for awhile, turn away from all the noise that’s going on in our minds, and listen to the sounds that are out there in God’s creation. Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” But we’ll miss it if we’re not paying attention.
That’s the first step, enjoying, taking delight in this great world that God has created. But we don’t stop there. The psalmist fills his mind with wonder at the greatness of creation, then he goes on to remember that all this was created by God–His God, the God who’s entered into a covenant relationship with His people. This creation that so much fills him with awe and wonder is completely dependent on God. It’s created by Him: “You placed the world on its foundation so it would never be moved. You clothed the earth with floods of water, water that covered even the mountains. At the sound of your thunder, it fled away. Mountains rose and valleys sank to the levels you decreed. Then you set a firm boundary for the seas, so they would never again cover the earth” (vv. 5-9, NLT). But God’s involvement with the creation didn’t end there. He continues to intervene: “Every one of these depends on you to give them their food as they need it. When you supply it, they gather it. You open your hand to feed them, and they are satisfied. But if you turn away from them, they panic. When you take away their breath, they die and turn again to dust. When you send your Spirit, new life is born to replenish all the living of the earth” (vv. 27-30, NLT). The psalmist begins, in verse 1, with “O Lord my God, you are very great,” then he goes on to enumerate some of the ways that God’s greatness can be seen in His world. He fills verse 1 with meaning. He develops it, meditates on it. We can meditate on God’s Word by repeating a short phrase and allowing it to sink into our hearts, or by beginning with a short phrase and developing it, filling out its meaning. This is what the psalmist is doing.
And then, having done that, he bursts into praise: “The glory of Yahweh–let it last forever! Let Yahweh enjoy his creation! He takes one look at earth and triggers an earthquake, points a finger at the mountains, and volcanoes erupt. Oh, let me sing to Yahweh all my life long, sing hymns to my God as long as I live” (vv. 31-33, The Message). The created world is full of wonder and mystery. The more we learn about it, the more we realize how little we really know. And this great, vast universe is dependent on God every moment for its continued existence. The creation is a window, through which we can see something of the greatness of God; and when we grasp this, the proper response is praise: “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will praise my God to my last breath!”
The hymnwriter Fanny J. Crosby was blinded when she was 6 weeks old by improper medical treatment. She wasn’t able to look around at the visual beauty of the created world, like the psalmist does. Once a minister said to her that it was a shame the Lord hadn’t given her the gift of sight, and she responded: “‘Do you know that if at birth I had been able to make one petition to my Creator, it would have been that I should be born blind?’ ‘Why?’ asked the surprised clergyman. ‘Because, when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior’” (Kenneth W. Osbeck, 101 Hymn Stories, p. 167). One of her greatest hymns has these words in the chorus: “This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior, all the day long.” Her life was filled with praise to her Savior and Creator, even though she couldn’t see the things God had created around her.
How do we become like that? How do we become people who can say, truthfully, “this is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long?” The first step is to stop, step aside from our hurried pace, and remind ourselves of who God is. We need unhurried time in God’s presence, cultivating a fresh awareness of His greatness and majesty. Paying attention to God’s creation can be an important part of this step. Our perception of God becomes distorted over time. We tend to reduce Him to a more manageable size and forget who He really is. Meditate on the vastness and power of creation, then remind yourself that even the greatest things in creation give us only a dim reflection of God’s infinite majesty. Think of the devastation caused by tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and tidal waves. These things only give us a small glimpse into the magnitude of God’s infinite power. Meditate on these things. Make use of them to fill out the meaning of verse 1: “O Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty.”
Related to this, we’d be wise to cultivate a spirit of attentiveness to what is going on at the present moment. Most of the time we’re thinking about what happened yesterday, or what we’d like to be doing at the moment, or we’re imagining ourselves telling-off someone we’re angry with. We seldom give our full attention to what we’re actually doing. Even in conversation, rather than listening to the other person, we’re thinking ahead to what we’re going to say when there’s a break in the conversation. Here are some wise words about prayer, and they also apply to praise: “Prayer becomes difficult when we are preoccupied. If lack of time for surprise guests is a sign that our schedule is too full, then lack of concentration at prayer is a sign that our minds are too cluttered. Either we have too many distracting concerns or we need to learn how to loosen the grip that legitimate concerns have on our minds and imaginations” (Hugh Feiss, Essential Monastic Wisdom, p. 11). Part of our problem with learning to praise God is that we’re just not paying attention to what He’s doing. We’re not attentive to His presence in the world around us. We’re too preoccupied with the cares of our lives. But we can cultivate the habit of pulling ourselves back to the present moment, giving our attention to what is actually happening right now. And, as we do that, we’ll find plenty of things for which we can offer praise to God.
But then, even doing all this, we need help learning how to offer praise God our Creator. We need help learning an adequate vocabulary for praise and worship, in the same way that we needed help learning to speak in the first place. We learned to speak by listening to others and imitating their speech. The Psalms and worship music of the Church can help in a similar way. We can use these things as a school for prayer and praise. I quoted Thomas Merton early in the sermon. He says this, later in the same book: “The function of the Psalms is to reveal to us God as the ‘treasure’ whom we love because He has first loved us, and to hide us, heart and soul, in the depths of His infinite Light. The Psalms, therefore, lead us to contemplation” (p. 14). “There is no aspect of the interior life, no kind of religious experience, no spiritual need of man that is not depicted and lived out in the Psalms. But we cannot lay hands on these riches unless we are willing to work for them.... In the last analysis, it is not so much what we get out of the Psalms that rewards us, as what we put into them” (pp. 44-45). We enter into this school of prayer and persevere in it over the course of our lives. In praying the Psalms, and also the worship music and written prayers of the Church, we learn more of who God is and we also develop a more adequate vocabulary for praising and worshiping Him. We learn to praise God in ways, and for things, we never would have thought of on our own.
As we, over a lifetime, pay attention to what God is doing within us and in the world around us, and as we immerse ourselves in the Psalms, worship music and prayers of the Church, we will more and more become people of praise. Some of our praise will be repetitive, as we stop and dwell on one thing, allowing it to sink more deeply into our hearts. Sometimes we will find ourselves speechless in God’s presence, or we may find that we can do nothing more than repeat God’s name over and over. But the more we grow to know God as He is, the more the cry of our hearts will be: “May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works.... I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.... Praise the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord.”
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