Prizing (to prize) means to estimate the worth or value of something, to value or esteem it highly.
Praising (to praise) means to express approval or admiration of something, to commend, to extoll.
There’s no praising without prizing. We can’t sincerely express admiration and extoll something or someone if we don’t actually value and esteem that thing or person.
Praising without prizing is a dishonest, false, and fraudulent thing to do.
If you’re singing along in church, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow”, it presumes you really mean it, that you have a genuine appreciation of some of the wonderful works of God and value and appreciate his mercy and love.
Good praising needs good prizing, and good prizing means first seeing and then appreciating, valuing, and esteeming.
Good prizing needs sound values, needs open eyes and ears and mind and heart—but it doesn’t necessarily need an open mouth! That’s the praising part—that comes later.
In the hustle and bustle of modern life and the myriads of obligations and requirements of our jobs, our families, and, in general, modern living, it’s easy to become blind and deaf to the works and actions of God in the whole world, in that small part of it where we live our lives, and in our very life itself.
Taking time to see, to hear, to think, to reflect, to appraise, to prize, and to praise is at least as important as taking time to eat, to drink, to rest, to exercise, to care for health, to work, and to earn money.
Prizing and praising are key ingredients of praying—in fact it’s pretty much what praying is all about. Praying isn’t just providing God with a shopping list of our concerns, hopes, fears, woes, and wants.
Blessing (to bless) usually means to consecrate, sanctify, make holy or to request God to bestow a good upon a person, place, or thing.
In church Latin usage, to bless is “benedicere”. “Bene” means good or well; “dicere” means to speak.
When we say grace before eating, we say, “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts…” However we also pray (e.g. in Daniel 3), “Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord…”
“Bless the Lord” can’t mean to ask God to bestow some good thing upon himself—but it can mean to speak well, in some way
Actions speak louder than words. Any creature and all creation can “speak well” about God by manifesting him through the beauty and the wonder of his work in them.
In this sense, to bless God means to display and show forth the work of God in us, to “bespeak”.
Paradoxically, “bespeaking” doesn’t involve words at all. It’s means allowing the wonder of the work of God and his goodness to be seen through our lives.
This brings us back to prizing and praising. Praising, like bespeaking, is not so much a matter of words at all.
If the quality of our lives, our behavior, and our dealings with others are aligned with the designs of our maker, we are showing forth, bespeaking, blessing, and praising God.
Contrariwise, if the way we live and act and treat others is not in accord with the will of God and his designs in our creation, we’re not bespeaking, blessing, or praising God at all.
Be good—you don’t have to say a word!
30 May 2021