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あなたは私の運命の人

*pouts at the idea of moving from your side*

Balance
‘I will give you all my praise,’ I sang in a song. Suddenly I realized I had lied. Every time I grumble I am praising the enemy. Every complaint is an insult to God.
For balance, however, listen to Psalm 13. This dirge opens with, ‘How long will you forget me, Lord? Forever?’ With similar moans in the next few verses, the ancient blues singer continues his sob story. Then, just when we know where he is heading, he suddenly slams his song into reverse and declares, ‘I will sing unto the Lord, for he has dealt bountifully with me.’ The tail end of that little psalm looks as out of place as a fan of feathers on Odie! Yet no matter how odd it seems, psalm after psalm confirms that we can mingle praise with our pain. These inspired prayers prove that our Lord wants us to vent on him our grief and frustration. He wants honesty, not denial, and still he wants our praise.
Try hard enough and in every circumstance we can find reason to complain and reason to rejoice. To praise is to feast on the goodness of God. To complain is to languish in the squalor of self.
It’s your choice to rejoice
Or to blame and complain.
To sing a refrain
Or refrain to sing
Is to gain new ground,
Or go round and round.
Raise your praise
Or weep in defeat;
Make the gain
Or remain the same.
Curse and be worse;
Praise and be raised.
It’s you who choose
To win or lose.
To praise is to party. It is cutting the cords to earthly burdens and heading for heaven’s joys. It infuriates the devil because it not only plucks us out of the misery he had meticulously planned, it lets us sneak into the victory celebration ahead of time. To praise is to cheat the devil, laugh in his face and step into God’s time machine.