Praise the Lord Anyway!

Have you ever had days when the nagging inconveniences of life seem to gang up on you and threaten to steal your peace and joy?

Yesterday was one of those days. A simple project of replacing my computer keyboard and our modem with a newer, high speed one turned into a complicated process. Then, when everything seemed to be working well, we woke up this morning to discover our internet and phone weren't working. We finally located the problem. The modem power cord had somehow become disconnected.

Rev. & Mrs. C. C. Personeus in Pelican, Alaska, in the fifties

Such inconveniences remind me of my Grandpa Personeus, pioneer missionary in Alaska. Traveling home to Seward from Anchorage one night in the dead of winter, he got a flat tire. He slid out of the warm car, looked at the tire, and exclaimed, "Well, praise the Lord anyway!"

Those irritating yet really insignificant events in the whole scheme of things happen to all of us. They can ruin our entire day if we let them. The best way to keep them in the proper perspective is to learn to praise the Lord anyway.

We have no control over the occurrences of those annoying events. They seem to choose the most inconvenient times, don't they?

But we do have control over our response. We can praise the Lord no matter what happens. As we constantly speak of God's goodness and grace toward us, we bless Him and keep ourselves from being overwhelmed.

The next time a car cuts across in front of you forcing you to slam on your brakes to keep from hitting him, like happened to me yesterday, and you feel that road rage roar to life, tame it by praising the Lord anyway.

When you drop that last egg on your freshly mopped floor and it splatters all over, praise the Lord anyway.

When your toddler smears jelly on your freshly dry cleaned suit as you kiss her goodbye, praise the Lord anyway.

When your computer shuts down in the middle of preparing a report, praise the Lord anyway.

Praise the Lord no matter what happens! God inhabits the praises of His people. Praising will not only bless the Lord and cause Him to draw nearer to  you, but you will feel better too.

Courtesy Google.com