A United Front of Praise

DAILY BYTE

This is the world we live in:

A world where 15 million children were left without parents by the end of 2007 because of HIV/AIDS.

A world where leaders prevent food and aid from coming into their countries to feed thousands of starving people because of nothing more than pride and self-deceit.

A world where the Son of God could be born in a place as lowly and wretched as a squatter camp.

In a world such as this, praise is an audacious action. Praising God flies in the face of reason and good sense.

How can we praise when all around us poverty, disease, and violence threaten to knock the life out of us and those that we love. In a time and place when many are asking – no – demanding, "Where is God" in this mess of a world, how can we be so foolish as to praise God?

And yet, we do! When we worship, we make a point of setting aside time to come together, as people from many different families, places, and life experiences to do nothing else but praise God! Psalm 148 says, “Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and women alike, old and young together!” All of them are called to praise the name of the Lord!

People with HIV, leaders who starve their people, people who live in squatter camps, people who sit next to you in church on Sunday. Praise is not exclusive. There is no entrance fee. The act of giving praise to God is free and open to all. It is something we are all called to do, and it is something that brings us together, as human beings with one central goal. Praising God moves us beyond ourselves and connects us to God and to one another in ways that we would not normally be connected.

As such a family, we will feel both joy and pain, but we will never experience these things alone because we have been knit together. I am often overwhelmed by funerals – not just because the focus is on death and grieving – but because so often, people sing praise to God with more passion and richness than at any other time. At the heart of peoples’ sorrow about the brokenness of the world seems to lie a deep need to praise in spite of it, to join together in lifting up voices in sheer releases of praise.

I remember very little about my mother’s funeral, but what I do remember is standing at the front of the church with my family, facing the casket and the altar, with several hundred people standing behind like an army. And after the sound of the first chord from the organ, a wall of sound burst forth behind me, enveloping me and all my sadness, sending it up in a cloud of praise to God.

I turned around to look and saw people positively bellowing out their praise. Whether it is a way of protesting to God or simply giving thanks, praise is our expression to God of how we see the world and how we desire to see it, describing how God made the world and how God desires it to become. Praise is allowing our voices to burst forth through all of the madness and maintain that we are still alive, we are going to stick together, and we will not be silenced!

PRAY AS YOU GO

Pray this scripture this week, as I reminder of our united, persistent, voice of praise!

Psalm 149:6

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!
Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!
Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!

Amen.