praise comes hard to a tree-hugger

Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up.

Matthew 21: 8-10

I live in East Nashville, which means two things: I'm a bit vain about my fashion, and I support recycling.  Thus, when I read this passage in memory of this event, I had two looming questions:  Why would anyone let a donkey walk on - and probably ruin - their jacket?  And why would they cut off the tree branches of life-giving oxygen? 

Less facetiously, why would anyone cut off the branches they needed for shade during the sun and simultaneously ruin the coat they needed when night set in?  It seems foolish; is this what was required to for proper honor?  Is this what God needed from us? 

Then I connected it with this passage from Lewis, and it hit me: God didn't need praise, and God doesn't need our praise - we do.  It feels - and is - unnatural to get excited about ourselves.  Praise is not honoring something, but getting excited about it.  Praise completes our enjoyment, and invites others in:

The most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise… The world rings with praise ... of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. . . . I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment … It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.

C.S. Lewis (Reflections on Psalms, p. 90)