We all need encouragement to praise
by Tom Brennen
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Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights! (Psalm 148:1)
I was recently reminded that God knew what he was doing when he created us to live in community.
I had been going through a rough patch spiritually. So much so that I jokingly would tell my Christian friends that God and I were not speaking. It was a blessing to hear that my friends, too, had been through periods when they struggled to continue their desire to pray and praise God.
It is said that there are many ways to learn something, but sadly, it is only through bitter experience that our sinfulness can be broken. This happened to me when my wife experienced a sudden and significant illness.
My wife works in health and is not one to raise the alarm without need. She had never asked me to take her to hospital quickly before, so when she did so, I was alarmed and worried. To cut a long story short, an inflamed appendix had burst, leading to emergency surgery to address it. Through the blessing of our health system in Australia, she has since returned to health. Praise God!
With the crisis over, my thoughts turned again to frustration with God for the way things were in my life. Having had enough of this, my beloved wife lost her cool with me one day while driving along in our car and said, ‘Really? I’m alive, and you can’t thank him for that?’.
Well said.
Our reading today records creation joining in praising God – the mountains and hills, the heavens and depths, the kings and rulers, and even the angels.
We all need encouragement to praise God. Our sinful nature means it is not our natural disposition to want to. But God has given us help to join in this work, particularly in creating us to live and worship in community. Let us thank God for giving us sisters and brothers to hold us up when praising God is the last thing on our minds.
Lord, forgive us when we neglect to give you thanks and praise. Grant us sisters and brothers to gather as your people and praise you. Amen.
Tom Brennen is currently serving as principal of Lakeside College, a Prep to Year 12 Lutheran school located in Pakenham, Victoria. He has served as a missionary in the Middle East and has a passion for bringing Lutheran thinking to issues of social justice. As an educator, he is dedicated to ensuring a transformative Lutheran education is accessible to all families across Australia. Tom holds a Master of Education from Australian Lutheran College, a Graduate Certificate in Educational Leadership from Australian Catholic University and undergraduate degrees in arts, music and education. As an active academic, Tom has written and presented on many diverse topics, such as worship in Christian schools, the interaction between social justice and Lutheran schools, leading staff professional development and cross-cultural schooling.
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