Praise from the Garage Floor

I was sitting in the garage floor yesterday, painting a small window a lovely blue color, and listening to Rend Collective Experiment from my computer.  Singing along to some of the songs, I started thinking about worship and praise, and how my definitions of what that means narrows my width of worship and praise opportunities. 

Let me back up – worship and praise of what?  Worshipping and praising God, taking time for an action of gratitude, a heart of thanks for all that my God is and was and will be.  It’s an act that is uplifting, refreshing, energizing, and at times draining. 

So with that part said….

I’m sitting in the floor, paint brush in hand, and thinking about how worship is more than one style or one type of art and how my very definition limits me.  There is a painter who paints to music and creates incredible paintings as an act of worship.  The gardener who tends the plants so carefully to create a living canvas of color is acting out worship.  A dancer, with every fine tuned motor skill practiced, can move in time to worship.  A musician, a writer, a sculptor, a teacher, a child playing in the sprinkler… the list goes on and on.  Worship can take so many forms; I don’t want my definition to be so limiting – especially when we were made with so many ways to express praise. 

I’m going to start looking for new ways to praise, intentional actions to thank God for his goodness.  I wonder what forms it will take.  

Complaint Perspective

   Perspective can mean a lot of different things. To an artist, it could change the angles, the way that the eye moves across the picture. Perspective could be the focus for the author, writing in first or second or third person. Perspective is that view which can move the brush stroke, camera click, or curl of the pen’s ink to move ideas and attitudes from one area to another.

   With that, I found out today that with trying no complaining it also depends on perspective of heart, mind, mouth, and spirit. I mean that I have to maintain the right perspective throughout the day. I found out a couple things today. One is that it’s not easy to maintain. The proverbial apple cart doesn’t have to be upset and dumped, it can just be tipped a bit more than is comfortable. At that point, I would like to stop and remind life (and anyone within hearing distance) that I am not a teeter-totter. Yet, that doesn’t work so well. So, today I tried to maintain a calm attitude. I practiced giving things to God as they came and found that the teeter tottered back to where it was supposed to be. With that, I found that the way I responded made an enormous difference. If the perspective is a negative one, it is much easier to find myself complaining rather than dealing with someone or something in a positive manner. My mind, heart, mouth, and spirit need to stay where God wants them to. Easy? No, of course not. But, worthwhile? Absolutely!

To Answer the Question

    Someone asked me a few weeks ago how bloggers came up with blog topics and how they were able to write on a fairly consecutive basis. Well, I cannot answer for any other blogger, especially since I’m having problems still calling myself a blogger. All I can really comment on is my own experience. That consists of little scraps of paper and learning to keep a pen or pencil in my pure. A familiar joke in my house has become, be careful – you may wind up in the blog. And that is so true! A blog for me has been an outlet, a stage for my words that live more than just on my computers screen. I hope they encourage, uplift, teach, make you laugh, and make you think. I give a shout out to Russia, Brazil, India, and other various locations where people have clued in. That is just a really cool thought.

    Blogging started for me as a challenge from a speaker at a Conference not quite a year ago. I enjoy writing and wondered if I could do something like that. I wanted to get back into writing that wasn’t work or school based, and this seemed to be the perfect way. I have found myself with scraps of paper in my pocket ever since. As a topic comes to me, I jot it down and then stick the paper back in my pocket. Then, as I have time, I write. Normally it is in the hour or so before I go to bed. Somehow, pulling out the thoughts over a day is relaxing and I go to bed a bit clearer minded.
   It has been a little more than a month shy of a year of blogging. Thank you for reading – I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have enjoyed writing down these random thoughts.