Praise

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. - 1 Peter:1:6-7

The sunshine peeked through my office window. Most years I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. California is the sunshine state afterall. But it had been the longest season of gray skies in recent California history. 

The weather a seeming mirror to my life.

It had been an unexpected few months, and I’d been trying to figure out how to piece back together the story I thought God had been writing. It was as if I had been given a new lens, and my life seemed dramatically out of place, distorted, no longer making sense. But, I knew going backwards wasn’t an option.

I walked outside, determined to soak in the sun, to take advantage of the literal bright spot in my season of gray. The same gray shaded streets I had walked many times at lunch were now full of color. The light dancing on the flowers and off the apartment building walls. My skin drenched in warmth.

The light began to transform my heart. I felt lighter, hopeful, simply because of the presence of the sun. It was as if the light was bringing me back to life. I found hope and relief, like I could take a deep breath for the first time in a while. 

The sunlight led me to praise. To thank God for the beauty of the surrounding streets. To thank God for the cracked sidewalks and buzzing bees. The ones I usually ran from or tripped over. Through the sunshine he had shown me the transformative power of praise.

The world had not changed, viewing it in the light had. 

Perhaps this is exactly what praise is. It is viewing our lives with God’s light. It is looking for abundance in a place that seems forsaken, it’s illuminating the beauty that exists even in the most difficult of circumstances. 

Praise is remembering the God that we know and worship and seeing our life in the light of who he is. It is choosing to see his Kingdom on this side of eternity. And if we let it, praise can be the first step on the pathway towards flourishing in our current exile.