Monday 03 September 2012

Background

This community hymn focused on God and celebrating God'sspectacular victory over Pharaoh and his army is still included inJewish hymn books and used in daily prayers.

It includes powerful imagery as the events of the escape acrossthe Red Sea (Exodus 14) are remembered and God'sintervention to save the people of Israel is celebrated.

In our worship my experience is that we frequently find praisingGod and celebrating the work of God in saving us through prayerquite difficult. In general we can find it much easier in prayer toask God for things than to praise God. As a result our prayers ofpraise so often turn into personal prayers of thanks.

When it comes to coming up with words of praise ourselves maybewe struggle to find words, hence the all too often "Lord, you arejust amazing and Lord you are just wonderful and Lord you are just...". Perhaps a challenge for us today is that we are less surethan the Israelites about what we want to praise God for. Perhapssome of the things we feel we should be praising God for seem tooancient or remote. In contrast when the people joined Moses insinging this hymn they seem to have been absolutely clear why theywanted to praise God and clearly described God's actions.

Maybe we too find it easier to sing our praises than to offerthem as prayers. Certainly there are many popular hymns of praisein most hymn and song books, although I wonder if there is atendency for these to be about our feelings rather than God'sactions.

Finally, I wonder how much influence our environment has. Dopeople in cities, immersed in human creations find it moredifficult to praise God than those in wilder locations?

To Ponder

• Do you find praising God difficult? What makes it difficult foryou?

• What do you most like to praise God for and why?

• Are daily traditions such as the same prayer or hymn of praisehelpful for you? Spend some time thinking about why you feelthis.

• How might we help each other praise God more and better?