How Natural is Praise

Pslams 8:2 reads:

"Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, Because of Your enemies, That You may silence the enemy and the avenger." (NKJV)

"From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise [or strength] because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger." (NIV)

While I prefer the New King James Version translation, I include the New International Version translation for clarity regarding what the Lord has helped me understand about this verse.  I prefer the first translation because it makes this distinction: nursing infants.  That adjective is important to me because it prompted me to consider how natural nursing is to an infant.  To a human baby, nothing is more instinctive, inate, and natural than nursing.  I have seen each of my four children borne into this world, and watched in ecstatic fascination as, minutes after leaving their mother, they wriggle and search for the nipple, as though this is the very thing they were born for.  Two of my children were born at home, and to watch a mother birth a child, turn over and cradle it and begin to feed it is to witness human instinct in its purest form.

I include the second translation because of the use of the word praise.  While the NIV footnotes strength as an appropriate translation of the Hebrew word "oz," the word praise feels more powerful - an especially ironic observation considering "oz" means "might, strength."  It is appropriate, though, to equate praise with strength, because it is in our praise of Him that we find power.  It is when we humble ourselves and turn to the Lord and realize that He is worthy and that He is worth our praise, that He in turn lifts us up and makes us into something.  For us, our might is bound to our praise; when we have little praise for the Father, we have little strength.

And so if the Lord has ordained praise in the mouths of nursing infants, It must mean that praise is as natural an act as nursing: something so inborn it is one of our earliest and most primal actions.