“From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised.” (Psalm 113:3)

We wring our hands and fill our minds with worrisome thoughts, wrestling with God’s will for our day, our future, our lifetime. What exactly would he have me do? Why doesn’t he make it clear?

We read passages packed with meaty statements and struggle with how to fulfill our duties: “What does the LORD require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments” (Deuteronomy 10:12-‐13).

As brilliantly as the moon shimmers light through darkness, the voice of the Lord responds through his Word. “From the rising of the sun to its setting,” from the moment our eyelids flutter open until they droop shut, our primary task is to praise the name of God.

We try to complicate God’s simple directions. As we worship, as our minds are preoccupied with praise, we will be focused on obeying the call to love and serve him, to walk in his ways, and to revere him. As we intersect the commonplace with thanksgiving, he exchanges the ordinary and annoying and transforms the irritating and the challenging into meaning and purpose.

Rather than spending our day absorbed with the trivial, let’s take the challenge from Psalm 113. Let us use the moments between sunup and sundown to honor, bless, rejoice, meditate, consider, and find joy in the incomparable name of the Lord.