We Praise What We Love

It's Valentine's Day, a high Hallmark holy day for our culture's obsession with romantic love. I used to be pretty cynical about Valentine's Day (OK, as I re-read what I just wrote I guess I still am) but, at the same time, I'm all for spending time with your spouse and expressing affection in tangible ways. I even like those hard candy hearts with the little messages on them. In small doses.

But as I think about the ways in which movies, books and songs - let's just be honest about this - IDOLIZE romantic love, there is an interesting connection to be drawn between what we love and what we praise.

C.S. Lewis in his book Reflections on the Psalms says this:

The most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise…lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside.…My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us as regard to the supremely Valuable what we delight to do, what indeed we cannot help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment.

Lewis’ observation is true: we can't help but praise what we love...we gush about it, we celebrate it, we shout it out on Facebook. Think back to when you were dating your future spouse – how you couldn’t wait to tell your circle of friends about their best qualities. There were times where you couldn’t stop thinking about him or her, for they had captured your heart’s affection.

Our praise and worship of God ought to flow naturally out of a heart that loves Him – His character, His works, His fellowship. Having experienced His love (and faithfulness, forgiveness, protection, etc.) firsthand, we are moved to praise Him and motivated to let others know of His goodness. Read the Psalms and you’ll see that the psalmist follows the same pattern.

We praise what we love. I love Jesus. Not as consistently as I want to, and not with as great a degree of obedience as I should. I know I am not worthy of His love, but I know that while I was yet a sinner, Christ died for me. That's worthy of my praise.