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Pastor · Sunday Schedule · FBC
News
2004
From the Pastor
Meditation On Praise
Mostly our praise of God is evoked through the recognition of God’s blessing toward us. We praise God for what we have received. This is a legitimate form of praise and though we are often amiss in it our intention is pure.
Thoughtfully, the practice is nurtured every week through the singing of the Doxology as the offering is brought forward. We sing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow...”
Praise is different than Thanksgiving. Praise is lifting up the one who has blessed us. The focus is less on the thing received than the Giver of the gift. It is the same as saying to a person who has given us a gift, “Oh, you are such a wonderful person. You are always so nice.”
In the New Year I hope we will be more conscious of praise as it is related to all that we have received, but the encouragement of praise related to our blessings is not the purpose of this article. There is another aspect of praise I want to encourage while at the same time recognizing how woeful we are to practice it. It is the praise of God unrelated to anything we have received.
It is the praise of God for God-Self, God in God-Self is worthy of praise. We praise God because God is God. It is a vision of God in which for a fraction of a second we get a glimpse of God in His Being.
We see God for being God and not for what God is able to do for us. For a moment we see the All Lovingness of God. So pure, so embracing is this Love that we become lost in wonder. We cannot in ourselves conceive such Love; we are not as it is, but we know it is real.
We want to draw closer. We begin to leave all other things behind. We are drawn to its Light. We begin to desire it more than anything else. To be with God in such a moment is to know that whatever word we might speak, however high the praise might be, it is not enough.
We can only be. We can only communion. We can only let our heart speak the words.
Oh, how fleeting such moments are. To ever, even come close, however, is to know something more worthy than all we might think or ask for.
I cannot pretend to have ever been able to linger in such a place of pure delight. Mostly it is experienced in my soul as a longing. I believe it is a longing in all of our lives. I believe all longings have as their source, this one longing - to know God and praise God forever.
It is imperfectly expressed in this life. Mostly our praise will be connected to our blessings, but on occasion may we take time to reflect on God for God-Self, meditating on God as God, God as Love, God as the God who being Love, is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
Dr. David W. Andersen
          
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