Praising Continually

Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, my favorite line of all poems,


From time to time I heard people say, “I try to pray, but it doesn’t take me long to run out of things to say.”  I wonder if we might look beyond the blackberries and see the bush afire with God…if we might stop and observe what God has made and simply thank Him for it.

For example, have you ever sat and thanked God for a blue sky, green grass, the beauty of a simple blue bird or blue jay?  God didn’t have to make a pansy like that!  I wish I had the observational eye of Annie Dillard when it comes to seeing God in His creation.

She said, “In the top inch of forest soil, biologists found ‘an average of 1,356 living creatures present in each square foot, including 865 mites, 265 spring tails, 22 millipede, 19 adult beetles and various numbers of 12 other forms…”

Just last week I saw and watched some kind of fuzzy caterpillar with horns…it just seemed to glide across the rock and over the sticks that fell from the tree above.  I sat in amazement and thought, “God, you made that.”

My grandsons remind me of what their mom and aunts taught me years ago…life is too short to rush through…stop and smell the roses and look at the bugs and praise your Creator who just so happens to be their Creator as well.

It’s little things that cause us to offer our praise and somewhere along the line those little things form a trail to continual praise and conversation which we call prayer!  And when we start with the little things, like a caterpillar, we never run out of subjects for our praise!