Praise and soaring with Eagles

Have you ever been super tired? So exhausted that all you longed for was to just crawl into bed and forget the whole world?

I know I have been.

Lately I feel that way by 8PM at night! So weird for me since I've lived most of my life being a night owl. But this job and opening up a whole new operation with another new opening next door in July has me really whipped!

But you know what I've noticed? That sometimes, when I'm super tired and am certain that I have absolutely no energy left and there's nothing left to give, that something can come along to change it all. Maybe an opportunity to go do something really special that I never get to do (like spend time with Devon when he was home, or go to a concert with my old boss), or when I learn that a problem over which I've been trying not to stress (in Christian-ese we call this a "burden") has been solved (Christian-ese: "burden lifted"), or something super encouraging happens. Then all of the sudden my heart is light and my energy is renewed!

Have you ever had that happen?

Reminds me of Proverbs 13:12 (NIV): Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

This morning during my time with God I caught an insight into this rejuvenating, or renewing, experience in a different way.

To put this into context I'll mention that the work weeks have been brutal for me. There have been times during the past few months when I've planned a Friday night outing with John or friends, but have ended up so frazzled and exhausted by Friday night that I've ended up cancelling; so I've stopped planning Friday night activities. Last night found me crashed in bed, sound asleep, by 9:30PM (quite the exciting girl I must say-ha!). But I woke up at 1:30AM and my mind started looking at my upcoming staffing situation at work from every angle, I kept turning it over in my mind trying to make it work; finally I just got up and spent some time on the computer configuring some things and praying.

This morning when I came to my time with God I found myself singing songs of praise and worship. In my head I thought about how I could be singing all those I-need-You songs cuz I do so need Him. But all my heart could sing was worship of His greatness and thankfulness. Then my reading today was in Psalm 103 and the 5th verse (NLT) hit me in a new way: He fills my years with good things and I am made young again like the eagle. What's being described here is just like those rejuvenating experiences that I'm talking about above!

Praising God can have a rejuvinating effect. Praise can be how we receive these becoming "young", or renewed again, experiences that we read about in the Bible ( Isaiah 40:30-31). Just as an eagle is renewed when it allows the jut stream to carry it higher until it soars, as I rally all of my faculties to praise the Lord, I am renewed!

What about you, have you ever experienced God's renewing though Praise?