I must praise God

I have only discovered one way to keep my balance in life: I must praise God.

When I feel distant or alienated from people I love, it's usually because I have lost track of the treasure they are for me.  I must praise God, and thank him for putting them in my life.

When I feel overwhelmed at work and unable to appreciate my job, it's usually because I've lost sight of the blessings both of meaningful work in its own right and the way it provides for what my family needs.  Sometimes it is also because I am getting an inordinately inflated opinion of my value.  I may also become fearful of the future because of job uncertainty.  In all these cases I must praise God for his consistent providence, including the gifts he has given me, that he works through to provide for us and and for my coworkers.  And I must prayerfully trust him to open doors to a new workplace if that is his will for me.

When I feel dissatisfied with my home, car, or any other material thing in or missing from my life, it's usually because I have become too focused on the physical world and its offerings wonderful and distracting.  It is so easy to become materialistic!  I must praise God, and again thank him for giving me every thing that is good for me and for keeping me from things which are not.

When I feel overwhelmed by the challenges before me, it is undoubtedly because I've forgotten that I'm not supposed to be handling them on my own.  I'm yoked to the Lord, who does the work through the people and resources he has placed into my life.  I must praise God and thank him for providing a way for me, even when I cannot see it clearly.

When I doubt the Lord's presence, I often find it is because I have let my mind become full of worldly ways of looking at things.  The ways I interpret and respond to the things that happen to me are rooted in whatever viewpoint I have planted myself in.  I must praise God and plant myself in his present reality, and echo the prayer of the father whose son was possessed by a spirit, "I do believe; help my unbelief," and remember that God meets me wherever I am in my faith.

It isn't that I'm not supposed to do anything else about any of the above, but that I must do whatever else I should do in the context of praising God.  In fact, I posit that I cannot properly ascertain what else I should do until after I have given God his proper place in my life and in this situation.

(Every now and then I am inspired to write something that I'm concerned others might interpret as a lecture for them.  This being one of those posts, let me underscore that this is merely a reminder for me.  If the shoe fits the reader, too, well, praise God: both that need and our awareness of it are good things!)