Don't Bury Your Praise!

 “Eternity will be too short fully to recount His praise. 

Let us not shorten our joy by neglecting to begin on earth.”  Henry Law

   A gravestone has finally returned to its resting spot in a Michigan cemetery after it went missing nearly 150 years ago. It was discovered by an auctioneer who found the gravestone during a Lansing, Michigan estate sale last August. The family had used the marble slab to make fudge, but no one could remember where it came from. 

  So, with the family’s permission, the auctioneer contacted a local cemetery preservation society to return the stone to its rightful place. Society members looked for relatives of the gravestone owner, Peter J. Weller, who died in Lansing in 1849, but they couldn’t find any survivors. Eventually, they learned that when Weller’s grave was moved to a different city cemetery in 1875, the monument somehow ended up in the family’s home. On Sept. 26^th, the group conducted a memorial service for Weller marking the return of the gravestone. 

  We’ve all made our cooking mistakes but I think that they really “fudged” on that one. Using a gravestone to cook with has to be up there with one of the top gauche decisions of all time. It’s a bit like using a human femur to stir soup. Some things just ought not to not be done.

  Just as wrong is designating gratitude to the month of November or to the Thanksgiving Season. Praising God needs to permeate our lives 365 days a year, 24/7. Nothing so changes your life as growing into a person of praise. Too many of us compartmentalize praise and make it “church stuff,” when it should be life stuff. Gratitude should be woven into the fabric of everything we do, not relegated to a few hours at church on Sunday. 

  Have you ever tried to think of things to praise God for and struggled to come up with much? While I rarely have difficulty coming up with things to pray for, praise isn’t as easy. Here are five that will help: 

  1) His love endures forever! God loves us so much, He sent His Only Son to be the sacrifice for our sins. Never mind all the time that we spent ignoring Him, disobeying, etc., He still loves us. (John 3:16; Rom 5:8).

  2) His grace is amazing! His capacity for forgiveness is never-ending. No matter how much we fail, His grace is more than enough. (Eph. 2:4-5).

  3) He is sovereign overall! While none of us know all of the mysteries of life, God does. When you feel out of control, or that the world is out of control, He has it all under control (Ps. 103:19).

  4) He is omnipotent and omniscient! God has the power to do anything and everything! He knows everything and is never surprised. Nothing is beyond His power or knowledge. (Mt. 19:26).

  5) He is always faithful! The Bible promises that the Lord will be with us always, and He’s our ever-present help in times of trouble. (Ps. 46:1). God is awesome and has designed us to praise Him. After your personal quiet time with the Lord, the best place to praise the Lord is in your own home…Our homes and marriages should be permeated by praise. Parents become frustrated when their child whines or chronically complains. Yet, where did they learn that? Too often, it’s from us. How often do our children hear us praising the Lord? How often do we thank our spouse or praise our children? 

  If you put a dollar in a jar over the course of a week for every time you complained and took one out for every time you praised the Lord or thanked someone, you’ll probably have lots of money in the jar by the end of the week.

  Praise and gratitude must be the believer’s default setting. Last year when the pandemic rules began to loosen New York Times reporter, Soumya Karlamangla described how she experienced “a small burst of joy.” Every return to some old, familiar activity, from hugging people to getting haircuts to wandering the aisles of grocery stores, became “almost wondrous” to her. At least for a while, but then, she admits, the feelings began to fade. 

  Karlamangla had some advice for people looking to preserve that “post-lockdown feeling:” practicing the lost art of gratitude. “Once a day, stop and appreciate what you’re able to do now that you weren’t last year. You can make a mental note, tell your partner, text your friend or write it down in a journal. The method doesn’t matter, as long as you’re making a deliberate effort to acknowledge that things have improved.” 

  She goes on to cite scientific evidence of the physical and mental health benefits of cultivating gratitude, including better sleep and higher levels of happiness. “Feeling thankful for the little pleasures in our lives,” she concludes, “can add up to make us happier people overall.”

  Precisely because the pandemic was so disruptive to normal life, our emergence from it provided incredible opportunities for embracing this kind of gratitude. Habitually practicing gratitude is extremely beneficial for us, even for those who don’t believe in God. For that reason alone, we can hope that Times readers take Karlamangla’s advice seriously. Yet for us as Christians, gratitude isn’t some mental health strategy. It’s a profound way of telling the truth: to ourselves, to others, and to the whole world.

  Complaining isn’t harmless; it’s serious sin. The Apostle Paul wrote, “And do not grumble, as some of them did — and were killed by the destroying angel” (1 Cor. 10:10). Think about it. Who are our complaints really against? God. That’s so convicting! Who gave you whatever you find it most tempting to complain about from your spouse to your children to your job to your country to your government to your church (Nah, no one ever complains about church).

  Israel lost forty years wandering the wilderness because when they should have been praising the Lord for His deliverance from slavery in Egypt and provision and protection in the wilderness, they bellyached. We must grow weary of wandering in our own wilderness of discontent and ask the Lord to forgive us. Then, we must learn the habit of praise. Yes, there are some terrible things going on in our world and in our lives. Our Father though is in control. He’s the One we need to share our cares with. We must learn to live in Philippians 4:6, and not just at Thanksgiving, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

  Grumbling should be as rare for a believer as using a tombstone to cook with. Let’s commit to being people of praise!

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