Thankful hearts and voices raise...

Hallelujah! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the assembly of the upright, in the congregation. Great are your works, O Lord, pondered by all who delight in them. (Psalm 111:1-2)

 Sometimes it's really hard to be thankful, and sometimes you can't help but sing and shout words of thanks for all that God has done. Life has a way of pushing us one way or the other. That's a rhythm we learn to accept. 

This week I am thankful for the Wednesday morning conversations we have been having about the Psalms and how they connect with our lives today. This ancient collection of poems and liturgical songs provides a window into our relationship with God as they express the ups and downs of life in ancient Israel, which really isn't that different than our own. The enemies and challenges carried different names and levels of complexity, but life has always been challenging on this side of Eden. 

The psalms describe God's work. They describe our need for God's care and concern to be present in our day to day struggles. They describe our anger when we feel abandoned and betrayed. They give voice to our feelings of brokenness and pain as we struggle to find a way through a world of hate and anger.

It's easy to get bogged down in the abandonment and betrayal; the anger and hate. It's easy to become jaded and perpetually focused on the negative realities we encounter so often. Psalm 111, quoted above, gives us another choice. We can come together in an "assembly of the upright." We can join our voices together in a song from our heart that expresses what we sometimes forget to keep in the center of our lives: that the works of God are great. 

Even if we don't know exactly how God is going to act or if God is going to work to change a current reality, we have the ability to fall back on the grace-filled reality that we are loved - unconditionally, without question, forever and always - loved by God. If for no other reason than that (and there are times when there might seem like no other reason), we can give thanks to God for that promise. 

Today I'll choose to say, "Hallelujah. Thank you." And the mere act of voicing it will move me beyond whatever I'm facing. Thanks be to God.

JESUS MAFA. Healing of the ten lepers, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48295 [retrieved October 5, 2016].