Even Creation Praises

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"Praise the LORD? Praise the LORD from the heavens;" - Psalm 148:1 (NASB)

   If it difficult to read through any of the individual Psalms in the collection without seeing the term "praise," and the task is impossible in this one. When it comes to praise, the Psalmist leaves no one and nothing out: angels, hosts, sun and moon, waters, fire and hail, snow and clouds, mountains and hills, creeping things, kings, and the list goes on. It is almost as if the Psalmist is trying to tell us that it is the responsibility, the purpose of creation to praise the LORD. If that is what you gather from reading the Psalm, then we agree. However, some interesting questions start to come to our mind, such as, "How can snow praise the LORD?", or "How do the mountains praise the LORD?", since both of these are non-living items. The answer lies in the meaning of the word "praise."
   We tend to think of praise as singing songs or speaking good of, but there is a much broader understanding of praise that we can gather. In the original Hebrew the word for praise here is Hâlal, which means, "to be bright, to shine, to be splendid, to boast, celebrate, cause to shine, make bright... At the heart of this Heb. root is the idea of radiance." *  A way of over-simplifying this is to say that praise puts the spotlight on God. A spotlight is a source of light that is used to illuminate something or someone else.  If you think of praise in that context, it begins to take on whole new application . If you have ever walked out of your house the morning after a thick blanket of snow has covered the ground, it is hard not to marvel at the beauty and purity that permeates. Also, mountains, in their splendid beauty point ever upward to the LORD who carved them with His own hands. The first time I looked at the vastness of the Grand Canyons, the view amazed me, but the "grandness" pointed to the God who created this wonder
   With all this in mind, does it not seem likely that our purpose is the same? We are the pinnacle, the masterpiece of His creation, fashioned in His own image. In addition, Christians have been promised eternal life in heaven with the Creator, because of the blood of Jesus. How much more should our lives put the spotlight on God? How well does your life individually illuminate Him? Ask the LORD to help you spotlight Him in your world today.



*Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible, NASB, Spiros Zodhiates, (H1984)

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