Today we are continuing our sermon series ‘Teach us to pray’ by thinking about praise. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he gave them the Lord’s Prayer which begins and ends with praise. Our father who is in heaven…yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory. Beginning and ending with praise is good model for us to follow in our own prayers. Praise reminds us who God is and of our relationship with him which encourages and enables us to come to him in prayer.
This afternoon I was reading George Herbert’s poem ‘Praise 2’ which some of us might know as the old hymn ‘King of glory, king of peace’. Herbert includes the glorious line:
‘And the cream of all my heart
I will bring thee.’
It made me think of gold top milk which has a layer of thick cream in the neck of the bottle where all the richness of the milk has risen to the surface. I wonder what it would mean if we brought all the cream…all the richness of our hearts…to God in praise this week?
with love and prayers
Rebecca