Psalm 148 is only 14 verses, and the phrase "Praise the Lord" or some variation of it appears 12 times. There are also clear, barely suppressed echoes of it another 11 times.
That's a lot of explicit and implicit praise-the-Lords, and it's one of those phrases that sounds so different depending on how it's said, by whom, and for what reason. At the moment I can think of at least three different ways it gets said, and to me one of them feels tolerable, another seems deplorable, and a third sounds ... well, I'll let you decide for yourself, once I work it out a bit more (hopefully by Sunday morning!).
Just wondering, though ... when did you last say "Praise the Lord"? What prompted it? And what did you mean by it?
And ... one little note.
In this psalm the psalmist does not praise the Lord for the sun and moon, shining stars, sea monsters and deeps, mountains and fruit trees and cedars and creeping things and all birds and so on. This is not a Thanksgiving-kind-of-poem about praising God for all that God has put into the world for us to see and be glad for.
Rather, the psalm is an act of reminding all these inanimate and animate things of the cosmos to be about their proper and truest business, which is to praise the Lord. The psalmist is speaking to the cosmos, the Earth and all things in it. Which makes me wonder: can a nebula or a mountain or an insect or a mulberry bush praise God? And if so, how on Earth do we encourage them to do this?
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