This morning, I am at church like I am almost every Sunday. I’m playing the piano and praising at the same piano bench and stage from which I normally praise. But today is different for me. I am praising from a very different place even though I am exactly where I always am.

Yesterday I had experienced disappointment and heartache. Loss of something I hoped for. So today I realized I felt very much like a balloon that had once been inflated but now is deflated and stretched thin. I felt like a sail with no wind to push me or guide me. Disappointment or loss does that to you. As the scripture says, “hope deferred makes the heart sick.”  It literally changes where you are even though you are the same place that you have always been.

As I sat at the same piano bench, so very far away in my mind from where I usually praise, I found it more difficult to catch my breath and to breathe out praise.

A realization came to me.  From this place, from loss, from sickness, from heartache, from disappointment, from uncertainty in my circumstances and even from a place of questions; from all of these places our praise is an act of faith. It’s a profession of what we truly believe. In a way it’s more profound and real. 

Here we say “God is good all the time” but only here is saying it truly an act of faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, or the evidence of things unseen.  It is as if we are declaring that here Lord, in the wreckage, in trying times, and in every hard moment, even here Lord, I declare you are good always. That’s true faith!

All of us will get the opportunity to praise God anyway and no matter what.  All of us will get the opportunity to stand in the place of loss, disappointment, pain, or when our faith is not making what we see change. When it seems ridiculous to say “God is good.” Only from here can you truly understand that no matter what we have a reason to praise and to declare “God you are good!”

Wherever you are today. Whether from abundance or lack, praise with me! Whether from a need met or from an unanswered prayer, praise with me! Whether in the pit of despair or in the fields of joy, praise with me! Whether from the valley of disappointment or the mountain of triumph, praise with me! Praise God anyway, no matter where you praise him from because he really is always good and worthy. So just praise Him!