We are naturally "praising" people: I love that movie! Taste this cheesecake; it's fabulous. Knitting is so relaxing. Lake Tahoe is beautiful! We praise because we want others to see and enjoy what we see and enjoy. And when they do, our delight is reinforced.
As C.S. Lewis points out, praising something enhances our enjoyment of it, but as any parent knows, praise also connects us to others and reinforces the beauty/ goodness of what we see in them. When we praise someone, we acknowledge truth, goodness, and beauty in them. When we lose a friend to death, we also lose their enjoyment of the good they always saw in us. And losing that enjoyment/praise leaves a gaping hole in our spirit!
As naturally as praise comes to us, however, it seems difficult or stilted when it comes to praising God. Unless the Holy Spirit overshadows us and "pours out into our hearts the love of God," we somehow feel foolish or artificial in trying to praise God. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis describes the moment of his conversion from atheism to theism, but his conversion was "...to theism, pure and simple, not to Christianity. I knew nothing yet about the Incarnation. The God to whom I surrendered was sheerly nonhuman.... No slightest hint was vouchsafed me that there ever had been or ever would be any connection between God and Joy. If anything, it was the reverse.....For all I knew, the total rejection of what I called Joy might be one of the demands, might be the very first demand, He would make upon me....There was no strain of music from within, no smell of eternal orchards at the threshold, when I was dragged through the doorway. No kind of desire was present at all."
Lewis's conversion had been an intellectual recognition of Truth, but entering into companionship with the Supreme Being with joy was not on his radar. He saw little benefit in attending church:
But though I liked clergymen as I like bears, I had as little wish to be in the Church as in the zoo. It was, to begin with, a kind of collective; a wearisome "get-together" affair. I couldn't yet see how a concern of that sort should have anything to do with one's spiritual life. To me, religion ought to have been a matter of good men praying alone and meeting by twos and threes to talk of spiritual matters. And then the fussy, time-wasting botheration of it all! the bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organizing. Hymns were (and are) extremely disagreeable to me. Of all musical instruments I liked (and like) the organ least. I have, too, a sort of spiritual gaucherie which makes me unapt to participate in any rite.
The journey from "calling one's soul my own," that Lewis describes to a free outpouring of praise and thanksgiving -- or enjoyment of the Divine Presence -- is a difficult threshold for most of us, I dare say. We can be good church-goers all our lives without really enjoying it, just as we can be good "pray-ers" for most of our lives without ever becoming good "praisers," or enjoyers of God.
As we see at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit makes all the difference -- even to those who spent three years in the presence of Jesus Christ Himself, Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus promised that His own joy in the Father would be ours: I tell you these things that my joy will be in you, and your joy will be complete (Jn. 15:11).
And He also told us that we could ask for the Gift of Joy, or the Gift of the Holy Spirit. If my word remains in you, you can ask for whatever you will, and it will be done for you.
In the meantime, while awaiting that Gift, we can learn praise (enjoyment of God) through the Psalms, a subject for tomorrow.
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