If prayer is supposed to change things, then praise is bound to change me.
Maybe it's not my circumstances so much that need to be changed or even the people around me. Maybe it's me that needs to be transformed from the inside out.
Maybe I desperately need kingdom eyes. Maybe I need Heaven's perspective. Maybe I need a new lens.
Maybe when my soul is sick with the weight of this world, God offers praise as my prescription because He knows that praise is the precursor to a miracle, any miracle...in me.
What did Jesus say before He called Lazarus out of his tomb? "Father, I thank You that You have heard me." What did He do before His death, before the saving of all of mankind? He took bread and wine and gave thanks.
Maybe the saving of my soul, the daily deliverance from the enemy and my daily entrance into the life God has given me requires a springing up of praise before I see the tangible evidence of the hope I now have. Maybe praise is the very act of opening my eyes to the light of His Love.
But if I'm honest...praise doesn't "spring up" in me most days. In fact, I usually trudge the same trails, making circles in the desert, all the while my soul becomes parched. After all, I was never meant to find life in worry, control, pride, fear, or numbing myself to pain. But I've listened to the lies and they have become my home.
Where to go from here?
And suddenly, out of nowhere, God intervenes. In the most unlikely of ways. I never would have asked for this. But here in this place, this place of pain and loss, this dead and broken place, He makes praise to spring forth in me. It takes wrestling with Him in prayer, it takes crying out to Him, it takes me being honest with Him about the deep sorrows and the temptation to take the easy road and just shut down, but He births a spirit of worship and praise in me and out of this dry, cracked ground, new life springs forth.
There's an amaryllis bulb sitting on my windowsill. I received it as a gift on Thanksgiving day (how perfect is that?!). Of all times to bloom, it blooms now, in December. In the dead of winter. The unfurling, bright red blossoms trumpet forth loud and clear: "The old things have passed away. Behold! The new has come!"
*Inspired in part by Ann Voskamp