I recently created a 31-day Advent/Christmas devotional booklet for my church called “Glory to God in the Highest.” I will be posting a devotional from it each day between now and the end of the year. Enjoy!
Scripture: Luke 2:20
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, used a revised version of the Westminster Shorter Catechism of 1648 to teach the Christian faith to new believers. The first article of the catechism is the following:
Question 1. What is the chief end of man?
Answer. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
In other words, the most important thing that we human beings are supposed to do is what we see the shepherds doing when they leave the holy family at the manger: glorifying God. Yet I don’t think I’m alone when I say that, outside of Sunday morning worship services, I spend little time thinking about glorifying God. Why?
C.S. Lewis explores this problem in his book Reflections on the Psalms:
We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and of His worshippers, threatened to appear in my mind. The Psalms were especially troublesome in this way—”Praise the Lord,” “O praise the Lord with me,” “Praise Him.” (And why, incidentally, did praising God so often consist in telling other people to praise Him?…)[1]
Of course, unlike any tin-pot dictator, God is the one object that perfectly deserves all of our praise all the time. He doesn’t need it, but we need to do it—for the same reason, Lewis says, that we need to praise a great work of art, only infinitely more so:
The sense in which the picture “deserves” or “demands” admiration is rather like this; that admiration is the correct, adequate or appropriate, response to it, that if paid, admiration will not be “thrown away,” and that if we do not admire we shall be stupid, insensible, and great losers, we shall have missed something… He is that Object to admire which (or, if you like, to appreciate which) is simply to be awake, to have entered the real world; not to appreciate which is to have lost the greatest experience, and in the end to have lost all…
The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game—praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars.[2]
Nothing, Lewis says, brings us greater delight than to praise what we enjoy. To praise is to “complete” the enjoyment; it is, Lewis writes, “its appointed consummation.”
If this is true of everything that is less than God, how much more true is it of God? Lewis even refers to the catechism when he writes the following:
The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.[3]
Is glorifying God a priority in your life? Think of five things right now for which God deserves your thanks and praise. Spend time worshiping him.
1. C.S. Lewis, “Reflections on the Psalms” in The Inspirational Writings of C.S. Lewis (New York: Inspirational Press, 1986), 177.
2. Ibid., 178-9.
3. Ibid., 180.
Very good insight by Lewis as to “why praise”?
Yes. It spoke to me because I used to have that same question.