What is true "praise?"

Last night I asked my high school students "what is praise?" Here are some of their answers.

Worship. Prayer. Giving your heart to the Lord. Saying God is good even when life isn't. Thankfulness. Contentment. Seeing the beauty in things. Giving your “bad stuff” to God. Making a connection to God. Something you do every day, every minute. Lifestyle. Exaltation. Adoring. A compliment the person already knows, but you give it anyway. A compliment because of who or what makes them “them.” Your life and your actions. Encouragement. Love. A hug. Dancing. Running. Everything can be praise.

I just thought that was cool. And here's a quote from a book I've been reading: "What if we were so moved by who God is, what He's done, what He will do, that praise, adoration, and worship continuously careened in our heads and pounded in our souls?"

Praise and Service

Praise

Ok, so last night was the first real youth group of the new semester and we decided to do an all praise night with jr. high and high school together. The students leading the night had been preparing for months - learning new songs, replacing music equipment, setting up new lights, and who knows what else. I was in the States for most of this, so I was just really excited to see how the night went. We've never done an all singing night, and while the night wasn't perfect, I think it was definitely the start of a tradition. One of my favorite moments of the evening was during a really upbeat song with everyone singing and in the middle of it all were two little 6th grade girls jumping up down and singing with all their might. They didn't care that they were surrounded by a bunch of non-jumping high schoolers or that they looked silly, they were just enjoying praising God! And it challenged me so much because how often am I more concerned with what others may think instead of just praising the Lord? And I thought about how much He must have loved that, the purity and innocence in their hearts.



Service

Over Christmas break a few people had the idea of collecting extra blankets and passing them out to people in need, so today we finally had a chance to do that and what a blessing it was! About 15 students met at the youth center at 10am this morning (it's Saturday mind you!) and headed off to an area where homeless people are generally at. We split up into 3 groups and spread out. I was on "team red-head" and we headed down the street looking like one big family. We quickly found one lady sitting on the street obviously in need but trying to sell a few pictures. We gave her a blanket and some bread to which she replied "xie xie, xie xie, xie xie! (thank you)" with a huge smile on her face. Feeling pretty excited, we kept walking to see who else God would bring our way. One student knew of a section of the street where people usually are, so we headed there. We found several people in a row doing whatever they could to earn money: an armless boy drawing with his toes, a handless man singing, and a blind man playing a traditional instrument. To each one we gave bread and a blanket and received huge smiles and words of gratitude in return. My favorite story of the day though was when we found a blind mom and her approximately one year old son. We knelt down and offered food and the blanket and the son immediately began to eat it and the mom just started crying and saying how thankful she was. So, did we tell each of them about our faith and beliefs? No. But were they impacted by the love of God anyway? Heck yeah!

Trying Again...

Ok, so I obviously haven't posted anything in over a year. But, as I have just told many of my supporters, I really am going to try to be more committed to writing on here this year. So, we'll see how it goes...

For my first post of this year, I keep trying to think of fun stories to share, but I have too many... So, I guess I'll go with the first one I thought of. As most of you know, I just returned from a trip to the States, and while in the States I cut off about 15 inches of my hair. So of course it's a bit noticeable, and is definitely the first thing people have commented on when they've seen me. And most of them have been very nice and said they like it (and I think most of them actually do!) but there's always a few that are a little more honest. For example, my local friends said they liked it the first time they saw it when it was straight, but the next day I saw them and had it curly and they were like "What did you do to your hair?? What's wrong with it? Why did you mess it up?" and were literally pulling on it trying to straighten it out. And then they were so confused when I said I wanted it that way...

I think my favorite story though is of a 6th grade boy. When he saw me he didn't even recognize me at first, and then when he figured out it was me he slowly walked up and carefully gave me a hug and says "You cut off all your hair! You look....different..." I asked him if it was a good different or a bad different and he goes "Umm....I don't really know, just different..." and at this point my co-worker pulls him aside and says "Anytime a girl gets a haircut you need to tell her it looks great. So go tell Amber she looks beautiful." The poor kid was mortified!! Tell a girl she looks nice??? Ewww!! He literally ran away. And it made my day. =)

So, that's the story of the day. And this isn't the best picture, but it's the only one I have at the moment...