Where's the Praise?

Praise, O servants of the LORD,
Praise the name of the LORD!
Blessed be the name of the LORD
From this time forth and forever more!
From the rising of the sun to its going down
The LORD’s name is to be praised.
The LORD is high above all nations,
His glory above the heavens.
Who is like the LORD our God,
Who dwells on high,
Who humbles Himself to behold
The things that are in the heavens and in the earth?
He raises the poor out of the dust,
And lifts the needy out of the ash heap,
That He may seat him with princes –
With the princes of His people,
He grants the barren woman a home,
Like a joyful mother of children.
Praise the LORD!

(Psalm 113)



Well before arriving at the end of Psalm 113:3 my heart felt the prick. My grand-daughter turns one tomorrow, and as a remnant of playing “peek-a-boo” loves to look at the world through splayed fingers. That’s what I felt my heart doing as a read, looking at my yesterdays. No grin, however, spread across my face, nor did innocent pleasure sparkle from my half concealed eyes. No! Chagrin colors the lens through which I peer, even now, for these psalmist’s words could not have flowed from my pen, not today, not yesterday, not in a world of my yesterdays.

What happened to the praise? Real praise, not the compulsory words of praise sung on Sunday morning, or the word ‘praise’ that peppers my prayers then falls, like a rock, once uttered, rather than soaring heavenward?

Does it lie entombed within four walls? Buried in the rubble of busyness? Unbirthed in a fiber-optic world that runs throughout the gamut of my days, cutting me off from the ‘rising of the sun and the going down of the same?’

Somewhere, within the life we’ve built for ourselves in our 21st century world, we’ve severed a connection, an organic umbilical cord linking our souls to heaven’s throne room. That lifeline throbbing with awe as eyes, designed to perceive the splendor of Jehovah in the majesty of His handiwork that flow ceaselessly around us, looks with wonderment on every fingerprint of His heart touching our day. At the fingerprints visible, everywhere. Fingerprints sometimes difficult to recognize on plaster, and masonry, and steel-beamed towering monoliths, but un-missable in the budding of a rose, in an infinitesimal clinging drop of dew on the slenderest blade of grass, in a robin’s early morning song welcoming the beginning of a new day.

Praise finds new birth in the first streak of light bursting over the furthest horizon, reminding us anew of Light, after the darkness of night. Praise soars upon the wind, where birds gloriously riding currents overhead bring to our remembrance that our own souls are borne on eagles’ wings far above our worldly cares as we find our rest in Him.

Praise bubbles up in a baby’s laughter, a child’s embrace, and the setting of the sun that marks a day now done, held securely in the Almighty’s hand as we lay our head down to rest at the close of day, in peacefulness and blessing.

Truly, there is none like Jehovah, the Lord Almighty, for though He dwells high above the highest heavens, He walks here below, among us, in faithfulness and mercy. He comes to the dust, to the dung-heap, to wherever His beloved lies. He comes bearing love, unconditional love, a love that rises up and restores. He bares a heart overflowing with a love, a love seeking out the ‘servant’ and serving him hope. Hope, where praise lies planted, in abundance, waiting to find utterance in a harvest that grows a hundred fold.

Where has praise gone? May it this day have found its home, from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same, within my own heart.



© DeAnna Brooks
23 August 2005

AND CLAY LAUGHED

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness;
but unto us which are saved it’s the power of God.
(1Corinthians 1:18)

As I read these words this morning, something within me hurts. It is hard for my mind to grasp the concept of someone willing to be fully destroyed. All because they won't step out of a spirit of independence...because they will not acknowledge a need for something greater than themselves....because way back, in a garden, at a tree, a whisperer already set toward enmity with God laid the groundwork in man's mind to question God's authority, God's character, and God's right to lay the ground rules ... to define righteousness, a righteousness reflecting His own holiness.

I have within my mind a picture so vivid, so audacious, so frightening, that I can hardly bear to describe it.

A man stands, made of clay, formed by Heaven's Master Potter with His very own hands; and though beautiful in design, the man would be nothing but an inanimate lump of clay were it not for the very breath of God filling his divinely fashioned lungs. He stands there, in front of God, beholding God's costly, bloodied provision, and he laughs. Out loud. Shaking his head, and laughing ... at his only hope.

Something in me shutters. As never before, at this moment when the picture unfolds so vividly, I stand in awe of Grace, in awe that the ‘shaking head’ doesn't immediately return to that lifeless lump of clay. I stand in awe that it continues to hold God's heart, knowing it captured God's love before a single atom found substance. The staggering power of God's love ... to hold back, to hope, to continue to hold out choice.


No wonder God set a safeguard for our souls, at the very beginning, embedded deeply within our Edenic clay. Words spoken over us at the moment of our own fashioning: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your spirit, with all your strength. I can't help but see them as the very breath that winged from God into the nostrils of man, instilling life. Winged into me. And with the utterance, the switch to loving God set to the 'on' position.

What incredible grief must strike the heart of God, continuously, when loved one after loved one, with little hesitation, reaches up and turns the switch to 'off.'

Moreover, I'm left asking a question, of myself. How often, when God looks upon my heart, does He recognize me going about my day, steeped in my own way, shaking my head in wonderment over what God could possibly be been thinking? And I shutter.



Even now, LORD, I hear Your grief-filled words speak to the hidden waywardness of my heart: “My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are My ways your ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
I can only confess, with a brokenness of my own, what You already know. Though my tongue confesses You are God, all to readily I find myself thinking Your ways little more than foolishness in light of the world in which I live. In 'light' of the world .... Oh, Father, You are the only light. The foolishness of the world, of my own ways, only darkness. Please forgive the 'secret' attitude of my heart, so easily reflected in so many of my choices, of my thoughts, of my actions .... of my words. Continue to mold this clay, fashioning it with Your loving hands, until it truly reflects the image of You in all my ways.



© DeAnna Brooks
19 August 2005