Praise the Lord

So, you all know how I love my contemporary Christian music. And here is one I just heard yesterday from the prolific Matt Maher. It’s based on Psalm 150 which ends, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!”

The psalmist goes through quite the litany of things that should praise God. And finally seems to give up and says, “OK, EVERYTHING and EVERYONE, praise Him!” I love that. We can never praise God enough and everything should spend all of its time praising God.

Most natural things do so in their very existence. God made everything and so it is here for a reason. And most living things (other than people) fulfill their mission in life by just being and doing what God intended for them to be and do. Except for people.

We were born with intellect, imagination, a soul, and an internal desire to be with God.  Many can’t name that yearning, and they “look for love in all the wrong places,” to quote an old C&W song. But, truly, if we aren’t asking God into our hearts to fill the space that’s made for only the Creator of the Universe, if we don’t let God quench our thirst for the Divine presence within, we are always searching, always lost, always feeling restless and like something’s missing.

It’s God. He loves us right now, just as we are with all our failings, faults, weaknesses, fears, depression, anxiety, with all our sins. Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, came to take those sins upon Himself and get nailed to a cross for us. As Paul says, it’s understandable when someone dies for someone good or to save someone they love, but to die for those who hate you, or deny you, or betray you – how do you die for them? And yet, Jesus does.

Sing praise to the Lord of all Creation! Because God is God and I am not. You are not. God gives us life (and gives it abundantly if we will only enter into relationship with Him). God Almighty, God all knowing, all loving, all merciful is waiting for you. He thirsts for you, too. God delights in us, but God will mourn for us, too, when we turn away or when we doubt that we are worthy. God made us worthy. You are worthy.