A long time ago, my spiritual director asked me a simple question -- when you pray do you praise God? That question made me think that when I did pray, I mostly was asking for various things from God. Then I would try not to forget to thank Him for what I have, but still, I wasn’t so much praising Him. If we love someone, we want to express that love by affirming that person of our feelings for them. In a similar way, if we love God, we need to tell Him this often and we need to praise Him. This is what we learn from Jesus today -- He prays to God, but right at the beginning, He praises God: “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” Maybe we should look at our prayers and see if we praise our wonderful God enough.
