To praise God for sunshine and pleasant things, “Glory to God” rolls right off the tongue.
To praise God when feeling absolutely crushed and consumed in darkness, we don’t commonly say, “I am in terrible pain, thank God!”
Pain is always providing me opportunities to revisit and contemplate this mystery, so I’m talking about it a lot.
In my experience, it becomes imperative to walk this path, to aspire to this way of unbounded praise without barriers, to come to know that there is no human experience no matter how torturous that can not be offered in praise.
In my many moments in darkness, if there is a barrier to be broken through, it seems to be this “praise barrier,” as suggested by one Orthodox priest who wrote a beautiful “Akathist to Jesus, Light to Those in Darkness.”
For me the breakthrough of praise, to declare “Glory to God for All Things,” means that the truth of God’s perfect providence is moving into my deeper places of the heart. It becomes more fluid to seep into more of the dark corners of my days and nights. It becomes a constant like breathing, holding me steady in the midst of fluctuating feelings and agitated thoughts that capture me in such distress.
Then rather than a far off ideal that only the saints and martyrs can attain, it starts to become a reality right now that is my only answer to the “unbearable” darkness. And it is being made available to me as a gift of grace, this presence of praise.
That right there sets us apart from the way of the world, in our ascetic practice. In praying without ceasing, we’re constantly going against the grain of the mental/emotional life that has been driving us on the surface roads with all the turbulent excursions. Sometimes I’m sitting here stunned by the thought of all the false assumptions I’ve held about just about everything, and what ungodly excursions have been distracting me from the spiritual focus that has become so imperative.
Now there’s no need to wait for a feeling of relief or pleasant experience to glorify God, as glorification is a deeper current of experience in the depths of the spiritual heart. More and more my days and nights seem to be guided from this place.
May it Be Blessed: An Orthodox journal 