Henry Van Dyke’s beautiful hymn, “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” begins:
Joyful, joyful, we adore You,
God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flow’rs before You,
Op’ning to the sun above.
This hymn describes the joy that a person can experience who lifts their hearts up to praise God moment by moment and day by day.
The ancient call of the Psalms rings out calling all nations to join in this joyful praise.
Praise the Lord, all you nations;
extol him, all you peoples.
For great is his love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.Praise the Lord.
The Apostle Paul used this Psalm to describe the universal mission of the church to call all peoples to praise their Creator. In doing so, he immediately connected it with joy, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him . . .” (Romans 15:13).
The 2nd century philosopher Epictetus recognized that praise to God was the foundation and goal of human life. He wrote: “But God has brought the human race into the world to be a spectator of himself and of his works, and not merely to observe them, but also to interpret them” ( Discourses, 1.6). This observation should lead us to praise God: “For if we had any sense, what should we do, both in public and in private, than sing hymns and praise the deity, and recount all the favours he has conferred!” (Ibid., 1.16).
Unlike all the other animals of the world, we can see beyond what is before our eyes and extend our imagination and abstract thinking to consider the transcendent. This gives us a capacity to speak, sing, and write hymns to Our Creator. It is our unique duty and opportunity as humans. It is our human destiny.
So, each morning when we rise, we should remember our Creator. We should rise to give Him praise. Beginning in this way will enable us much more easily to lift up our hearts to the Creator throughout the day, moment by moment, and live in His presence.
In the context of human sin, we also have the revelation of the Triune God as Redeemer. We should begin each day with praise to and meditation on the Triune God. As theologian Richard Lovelace explained:
Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther’s platform: you are accepted. Looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in that quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude (
Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal, 101).
This will fill our hearts with joy and set us in the right place. It will cause the flower to unfold before the sun.
Sometimes, we speak of Christian growth in terms of going to the church and reading the Bible. I believe that these are crucial (see my discussion of a structured life connected to God here). However, we must always remember that these are means. They are means to help us live as human beings before the face of God, trusting Him, loving Him, and praising Him.
For example, to merely measure attendance at church can miss the point. The goal of church attendance is to reorient our lives back to the Living God. We can attend church without a heart of trust and love for God. We can attend church as a duty to check off or to please others rather than as a means to the goal of enabling us to live more fully in praise before the presence of God.
Our goal as individuals and as churches is to engage ourselves and the world in praise. In doing this, we are not calling the world to something beyond what it truly is. We are calling it back to its basic humanity. As Richard Lovelace noted, “True spirituality is not a superhuman religiosity; it is simply true humanity released from bondage to sin and renewed by the Holy Spirit” (Dynamics of Spiritual Life, 18). This not just a duty. We are calling people to experience a life of praise that is an endless source of joy and a rock of refuge in the midst of the world. It is a life that unfolds like flowers before the sun.
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Photo by Quinn Bidmead on Unsplash