Offer praise as your sacrifice to God ... (Psalm 50:14)

On first reading, obedience to this directive seems too effortless. Offer praise as your sacrifice to God.  Aren't sacrifices supposed to be difficult, even painful? How can it be that praising our Creator is a form of sacrifice?

Compared to the religious ritual of sacrificing the first of ones harvest or flock, offering up praise to God seems too easy. It comes without cost. Weighed against the many times you and I are called to surrender our time, plans, or money for someone else's benefit, praising God seems to require nothing from us at all.

But, perhaps it does.

When times are continuously hard at work, then, yes, praising God for the gift of secure employment is a form of sacrifice. It requires us daily to tamp down impatience, to rethink attitudes, or to set aside the conviction that problems lie within the company or co-workers, and not within ourselves.

When turmoil arises in our families, then, yes, thanking God for loves one, each of them, is a form of sacrifice. It requires that we let go of past hurts. It obliges us to relinquish notions of what a family should be like and to find what is precious in the imperfect one of which we are a part.

And when the crosswinds of loss or illness sweep over us, it is indeed a sacrifice to embrace a life that's so different from what we thought it would be, and then to praise God for all that it is.

"Offer praise as your sacrifice to God. Fulfill your vows to the Most High. Then call on Me in time of distress. I will rescue you, and you shall bring Me honor."