Time to Praise

“When we see past our expectations into possibilities then we can praise.”

Loren Thornburg

I don’t know about you but life does not look quite how I thought it would at this point in my life. We have this picture in mind of what it will be like. It’s good to hope and dream, but it’s the expecting that gets us into trouble. Often we have seen how what looks to be a disaster can turn into something better than we had ever imagined. You’ve seen it in your life time and time again. Yet still we despair when things don’t go our way or turn out the way we thought it would. It’s easy to do. It feels right too. But what if we stopped just for a moment to see other possibilities, to see there might be something else going on here, something bigger beyond what we thought or what we can see. There, in our stopping, we can acknowledge all that is to our benefit, all that could be good, even better, and there we can begin to praise. There we will find it’s time to praise even when things don’t look as we thought they would.

“She became pregnant yet again-another son. She said, ‘Now maybe my husband will connect with me’...She became pregnant a final time and had a fourth son. She said, ‘This time I’ll praise God.’ So she named him Judah (Praise-God)…”

Genesis 29:34-35 MSG

Talk about a bad deal. Leah found herself married to Jacob, the same man as her sister, yet unloved and unwanted and nothing like she had thought things would turn out. She was however blessed with giving Jacob children which she thought would make him love her, connect with her, and want her. Each child she hoped would change things, but with each one she found her expectations unmet. I love what she comes to see with her fourth child as she says, “This time I’ll praise God.” It seems she came to the point where it wasn’t about having expectations met, it wasn’t about finding praise or adoration from people, but it was about God. She came to the place where she chose to believe that even when nothing looked like she had hoped it would that she trusted that God was still writing a great story in her life. You can believe that too, because it’s true. God is writing a great story with your life...even when it doesn’t look like you thought it would. That’s why we can join with Leah in the midst of disappointment and despair, ‘This time I will praise the Lord.’