a spirit of praise
I was listening to someone talking about revival the other day, and the need for revival both on the individual level, and in the church, and in society. He was saying that before there would be revival, there needed to be a spirit of prayer in the church. But he also said that McCheyne said that as well as a spirit of prayer, there needed to be a spirit of praise.
I've been thinking a bit more about that since then. For example, there was an outburst in the comments section of an American blog that I sometimes visit (I won't name and shame it, cos on the whole I think it does a good job) - it was on the occasion of the BBC series, Who killed Christianity. Without engaging much with the programme, they were quite convinced that the embedded proposition in the series title was true - the drift of their comments was only to lament that Christianity in Britain was indeed dead.
Thankfully, several voices from the UK chimed in to say, Hello, reports of death exaggerated! But I still came away a bit depressed. I don't think I'm particularly over-optimistic about the health of religion here, but we're not exactly dead either; and it just isn't very encouraging when people only focus on the deadness, the smallness, the ineffectiveness, the voicelessness of the church, in this part of the world or anywhere else. There clearly has been a reduction in the depth of people's religious convictions compared to several generations ago; it also seems that there's been a reduction in the depth of people's religious experiences too; and our society is much more materialistic and hedonistic than it used to be. However, this is the situation that we're in: there's no use sitting around wringing our hands and wishing things were like they used to be. We surely have to acknowledge that it's a day of small things, but we can't, shouldn't, despise it even so.
This just shows that the reasons for praise can't come from what we see round about us. But God is always worthy of praise, even in a day of small things. We should know better than to judge him by the problems and difficulties and sinfulness of our present situation - our opinions of him need to be formed by what he says about himself, not the faulty conclusions we would be led to draw from observing the day of small things. His arm is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor is his ear heavy, that he cannot hear. He is as kind and powerful as he always has been (and that means, infinitely, eternally, and unchangeably). As it happens, however bad the situation is, there are always more mercies surrounding us than we can count. But when things are very bad, there is always reason to praise him for his own sake - like it says in the psalms, especially in the last few in the book - Psalm 150, O praise him, as he doth excel in glorious majesty ... Let each thing breathing praise the Lord ...
I've been thinking a bit more about that since then. For example, there was an outburst in the comments section of an American blog that I sometimes visit (I won't name and shame it, cos on the whole I think it does a good job) - it was on the occasion of the BBC series, Who killed Christianity. Without engaging much with the programme, they were quite convinced that the embedded proposition in the series title was true - the drift of their comments was only to lament that Christianity in Britain was indeed dead.
Thankfully, several voices from the UK chimed in to say, Hello, reports of death exaggerated! But I still came away a bit depressed. I don't think I'm particularly over-optimistic about the health of religion here, but we're not exactly dead either; and it just isn't very encouraging when people only focus on the deadness, the smallness, the ineffectiveness, the voicelessness of the church, in this part of the world or anywhere else. There clearly has been a reduction in the depth of people's religious convictions compared to several generations ago; it also seems that there's been a reduction in the depth of people's religious experiences too; and our society is much more materialistic and hedonistic than it used to be. However, this is the situation that we're in: there's no use sitting around wringing our hands and wishing things were like they used to be. We surely have to acknowledge that it's a day of small things, but we can't, shouldn't, despise it even so.
This just shows that the reasons for praise can't come from what we see round about us. But God is always worthy of praise, even in a day of small things. We should know better than to judge him by the problems and difficulties and sinfulness of our present situation - our opinions of him need to be formed by what he says about himself, not the faulty conclusions we would be led to draw from observing the day of small things. His arm is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor is his ear heavy, that he cannot hear. He is as kind and powerful as he always has been (and that means, infinitely, eternally, and unchangeably). As it happens, however bad the situation is, there are always more mercies surrounding us than we can count. But when things are very bad, there is always reason to praise him for his own sake - like it says in the psalms, especially in the last few in the book - Psalm 150, O praise him, as he doth excel in glorious majesty ... Let each thing breathing praise the Lord ...
posted by cath at
12:10 pm
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