Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 3-023 Sunday 02 Feb 2003

Reading: Psalm 145 – A CATALOGUE OF PRAISE

Why is thanks (for what we have received) much more common than praise (for what God is and does)?

This is the last of eight acrostic poems in the psalms, the verses of which (if we include verse 13b) each begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

The psalm alternates between descriptions of God and outbursts of praise, and so should we: God is not just to be talked about but to be talked to. Soak yourself in the wonderful things this song says about God: 12 adjectives, seven nouns, ten verbs, and the 17 verbs of David’s enthusiastic response – don’t worry about the exact count.

Why should we praise God? He does not need to be propped up by flatterers or fans. Praise deposits faith in the bank of experience. There will be times when you don’t feel like praising, and then will be the time to draw on what you have deposited.

Praise is the consummation of trust and its appropriate expression. Praise is a compass to help us get our bearings, especially when the sky is dark, and the scenery unfamiliar. Praise is a polemical act: it is a dismissal of every rival claim. Praise is a useless act – what use is a kiss? It produces nothing, it consumes nothing, but lovers know its meaning. Praise magnifies God – not as a microscope makes small things large; but as a telescope brings far- off objects near and makes the invisible visible.

Psalms like this, celebrating the orderliness of God’s world, may simply be used to bolster social conservatism and the status quo.* But praise will not be silenced: the songs arise, as the old hymn says, ‘through all the changing scenes of life’

Construct your own dictionary of praise: a catalogue of words which are windows into God’s greatness and goodness.

– Howard Peskett

* W Brueggermann, The Message of the Psalms

Copyright Scripture Union, 2003

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