Lost in Praise

  O sing to the LORD a new song;
     sing to the LORD, all the earth.   Psalm 96:1


I admit it. I'm not overly good at praise. Not that I don't sing in worship or anything like that. I enjoy singing hymns on Sunday, but I'm not sure that's the sort of revelry that the psalms so often speak of. The "joyful noise" of Psalm 66 seems to suggest a bit more abandon than is typical of traditional Presbyterians. And today's morning psalm gets so carried away that it expects nature itself to join in.

  Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
     let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
     let the field exult, and everything in it.
  Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
     before the LORD

 (Just as an aside, a lot of worshipers seem worse at praise than me, at least the sung kind. As a pastor, I look out at the congregation while we're singing, and I've always marveled at the number of people who never sing at all, who don't even mouth the words.)

When I think about praise and adulation that gets carried away and lost it the effort, sports fans come to mind. Joyful noise is an apt description of what comes from the stands when our team is winning. The other place I've seen and experienced this is at a political rally. Strange to think that it is easier for me to get all fired up about my team or my candidate than it is to get excited about God.

I'm not sure I would ever want to turn worship into a pep rally or a political one, but I still wonder about the difficulty of actually offering myself to God in worship. (There's a striking picture of King David totally losing himself in worship from 2 Samuel 6. He gets so carried way that he not only leaps and dances, but he strips down to only a little ceremonial apron.) I've mentioned before how God can sometimes seem more a concept than a real entity who is encountered. Perhaps that is why we tend to measure our worship by how well we like it. Strange that we would do worship to please ourselves rather than God if we really thought God was the audience for our worship.

The closing verse of the hymn, "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" speaks of the final consummation of our lives, anticipating the day when "we cast our crowns before Thee, lost in wonder, love, and praise." It's an old Charles Wesley hymn, the sort I associate with the rather staid worship I grew up with. But it surely speaks of what worship should be, as well as what the psalmist describes.

Oh, to be lost in wonder, love and praise.

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