We bring the
sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord.
Several
years ago I found myself saddened over deep loss for the first time. I remember thinking up ways to try and
by-pass the pain. It’s funny when we are confronted with
sorrow how we first seek to avoid its sting. We do things like get busy, or lose ourselves
in movies or books. As much as I wanted to tell myself it was fine the truth
was I was disappointed and sad and there was not much I could do about it. And over time, as things settled, I began to
fully bend to sorrows blow.
People
would come over and seek to console me but rarely are there words that hold
sorrow well. What I do remember is their
presence, and the occasional word of encouragement from someone who had
experienced pain and was now on the other side of it. It never really mattered what it was, after
all loss is not always relative. Loss is
loss.
Since
then life has afforded many other sorrows and I’ve grieved even “greater”
losses. There were days when picking my
head up from the pillow seemed about all I could do, and walking through a
market to buy groceries happened on legs that felt like Jell-O, and with a heart so heavy in my chest air had to force its way in.
That’s what grief feels like.
That’s how sorrow makes it way out through our pores.

“Shout to the Lord all the
earth, Let us sing! Power and majesty
and praise to the King. Mountains will
fall and the seas will roar at the sound of your name! I sing for joy at the
works of your hand forever I love you, forever I’ll stand. Nothing compares to the promise I have in
you!”
That’s
when the meaning of the familiar song, “We bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord.” made a little more sense….”We
offer up to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving, joy and praise” (Heb. 13:15). Sometimes coming to God in worship
requires a laying down of that which we dearly love regardless of whether or
not we will get it back…and in laying it down God pulls our “Jell-O-ed” legs to
stand and holds our heavy-hearted song. This
is not blind trust. It is evidence of the Holy Spirit's companionship and promises his strength of joy. Our chosen worship affronts the blows of
sorrow and says, “Yet. will. I . praise . Him!”
This is so beautiful, Michelle. I relate to it in so many ways. During the saga with Norm I continued to sing with the worship team. I often felt like a big fraud for standing up there praising God when everything was falling apart. Then I realized that He wanted me to do exactly that!
ReplyDeleteWow, we could write a book together!