Thoughts from Culhwch

This morning finished up a series of sermons at Park Slope Presbyterian Church on prayer. Today we looked at praise. I think it offers some helpful dialog in conjunction with what I was saying on my last post. Basically the other point to keep in mind is that we should be able to continually praise God, even when it seems like He is not answering our prayers. The pastor made the distinction between praise and gratitude. Perhaps I was thinking more of gratitude in my last post. But perhaps it was something slightly different still.

I wonder what it means to praise God, even if we do so from a standpoint of individuals who have been redeemed, seeing always the Christ who died for our sins, and at the same time the majesty of the greatness of God. (Aren’t these also the same?). Is there a unity of thought and intentions behind the process which leads us from thanking God for saving us to the point of praising God for being the great God that He is?

I wonder if we have access to a richness in the act of praise, even supposing that that praise may be distinct from our gratitude. I mean, when we praise God for who He is, once we have come to know his saving grace, then that act of praise is made rich to us. It is endowed with a meaning which unites us somehow to God. It seems almost to stem from that connection by which we are made God’s children, the very connection which is Christ.

I don’t know, maybe what I’m trying to say here is that once we know Christ our praise is forever altered, it is always tinged with the knowledge of what God did for us, and that knowledge, even when we are praising God in a way which is distinct from gratitude, still permeates our experience of praising God, and I think makes it better.

I guess a part of me wants to challenge the idea that we must always make a distinction between praise and gratitude, because of this. But maybe that is just me trying to challenge what I hear and defend my prior position. In the end, though, I think the pastor is right to make the distinction. Sometimes we can find thanking God for what he has done incredibly difficult when we are struggling with something, or facing something very difficult which can cloud us from looking back on His role in our lives. And it is necessary that we learn how to praise God for who God is in a way which does not depend on our having every need that we have at the present met. Indeed, having unmet needs, and being willing to share that fact, is one of the ways that we as Christians can unite together as the body of Christ. And through those needs, maybe I think we have a greater testimony of God’s power. (Though that may sound opposite of the truth).  Even as I write that I question it. I’m not entirely certain. But I do know that God’s power is shown when he sustains us while we still struggle.