Weekly Devotions
Weeping spends the night,
but joy comes in the morning. Ps. 30:5
Texts for Sunday June 28: Lamentations 3:22-33; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43
Psalm 30 records the praise and gratitude of someone who was lost but now is found; someone who was sick “unto death” but now is made well; someone who was in deep grief but now has found joy. It is the speech of someone who has suffered so intensely that God seems absent (v.7) or angry (v.8).
A lot of agony
in the psalm, and yet, this is a psalm of praise.
I suspect that
in the misery, the psalmist had an insight similar to the one expressed by Suzanne Guthrie in Grace’s
Window:
When despair has
obliterated ordinary prayer; when the psalms fail and all words are stupid and
meaningless, the mantle of loneliness surrounding me becomes a mantle of dark
and wordless love. This darkness reveals the paradox of prayer: in the
absence of God, all there is, is God.
I am preparing
a lesson on a concept called Theology of the Cross. The lesson is for the youth who are going to the
national gathering in Detroit where they will walk with people who have known
struggles, loss, and death in profound ways.
We will talk about God’s solidarity and suffering. We will talk about how the cross shows us the
depth and reality of evil. And we will
talk about how the cross teaches us that life comes out of death.
Just when it
seems there is no hope, there is hope (check out the Gospel for this Sunday,
Mark 5:21-43). Weeping spends the night,
but joy comes in the morning.
Somewhere in
all those random thoughts is why this psalm is one of praise. God is present in
the absence. God knows the pain. God gives life as a gift. In all that, praise
is not a response to a certain circumstance - praise is a way of life.
Therefore
my heart sings to you without ceasing; O LORD my God, I will give you thanks
forever.
