How good it is to sing praises to our God. Psalm 147:1
I must confess that I have often struggled to appreciate the Psalms, especially those that just go on and on praising God. A lot of them sound a lot alike, endlessly reciting all of God's wonderful qualities. It's a bit repetitive. And what's the point? What is to be gained from saying or singing such things?
One of the places where my faith gets distorted comes from this last question. All too often, I approach faith as a means to get something I want or need. And while it is true that I do need and want God in my life, it is easy to become quite utilitarian in this pursuit of something for myself. God easily becomes an object to my subject, to borrow a grammatical analogy. God is a resource for me to use or employ.
The psalms of praise are pretty good at keeping God subject. In that sense, they look a bit like songs or poems composed by a lover for a beloved. In such outpourings of love, it is the beloved who occupies the center, a sun around which the lover orbits. Love poems have no hesitation about counting the ways they love their beloved or going on and on about the beloved wonderful qualities. After all a lover's life becomes reoriented around the beloved.
I'm of the opinion that deep Christian faith only emerges as we fall deeply in love with God. That, of course, requires a vulnerability and openness to God that can be scary for some of us. But then again, that is pretty much the same that is required truly to fall in love with another person.
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