To praise anyone, especially God, you have to step back from yourself and then immerse yourself in the glory of that person. It is in many ways like learning to sing. Many rock and roll singers have short careers because they don’t understand how to sing. They can’t step back from the affect their persona has on the crowd and they forget to breathe, to find the right pitch and diction. Singing is an exercise, a physical appreciation of body and soul that brings forth the depth of passion in the song. It means pushing everything else away from your mind and body, all the anxiety and fear that can close the throat and hurt the pitch. It means first learning to breathe and feel the air as a wonderful gift of life moving through your body to provide the perfect sound. You have to stand back from the pain of your life, the fear of your life, and the doubt of your life before you can see what is truly worth praising. These are breathing lessons of the heart. We need to learn to breathe again to feel the freshness, the freshness and the exuberance of the air. To praise God we need to breathe: we need breathing lessons.
Praise is not easy; it finds itself stuttering off the tongue. It is born out of the things we see, the things we pay attention to not necessarily from passion. Praise comes from the flowers that smell beautifully, the trees the stand majestically, and the people in our lives that stand courageously. Praise is observation before it is inspiration. In order to stand before the world to praise a God that many find objectionable, we need to learn to pay attention. Praise is beyond wanting; it is listening without wanting anything for ourselves. Praise is beating the drums because there is nothing else to do. It is strumming a guitar with melody and vibrant excitement because you have lost yourself in the sound of the chord. When things become pedantic, there is no praise, there is only precision and personal enjoyment. But when the keys excite you, and when the strings compel you, and when the breath through the trumpet brings you joy, then you are on your way. It all begins with breathing lessons.
Imagine yourself as a Jewish person in the 8th century B.C. You have lost your homeland, but your heart yearns for the times you sang with your family, you sang with your friends in the temple to the delight of your heart. Then you are removed from this experience. You try to sing but you need to learn how to do it under a new king and a new God being praised all around you. So you go into your houses and in the fields, when your captors are not looking, and you sing your songs. Your breathing was free; your mind was captivated with the hope of going home. And then you find yourself transported home to the temple with the songs of tradition. Would not you want to free yourself from the shackles of your captors and sing with the triumphant sounds of praise? You praise God because of the hope in your singing, the hope in your breath. All this takes new breathing lessons to praise God.
What are these breathing lessons necessary to praise God?
· Praise does not begin in the noisy atmosphere of the busyness of life. It begins as we step back from this atmosphere and listen for the distinct voices that form the chorus of sound. It is paying attention to the voice of stillness, the voice of patience, the voice of goodness, and the voice of wisdom. It is listening to the wind through the trees that may frighten but also ignite a sense of life and power.
· Praise is perfected through the practice of listening as we learn to breathe again with the breath of God. As the confusion inside us begins to calm down and we breathe in the fresh air of God, our mind begins to attach itself to the ways of living that honor God.
· Praise is set loose in the act of living or as in this Psalm, the act of playing. On the drum we raise up from our silence and set loose the joy of praise. As we strum a chord it raises a smile on our face because of its wonderful sound. In the same way, when we live harmoniously with God and others there is a smile arranged in our heart which is the praise of God.
For the Psalmist, one of his goals in life was to “rediscover the breathing lessons” that can produce a wonderful sound. That is what he wants for his life: to find the spiritual harmony between himself and God.
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