“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Psalms 118:24
Life is hard.
Sometimes I have difficulty remembering to rejoice and be glad. This can be made worse by people who always seem to be happy while ignoring life’s challenges.
Without going into the entire story, I often remember a TV show from the 90s in which one of the characters said he did not trust people who were always happy. This has stuck with me.
One of the reasons that the Book of Psalms resonates so strongly with me is that the Psalmists do not pretend that there is no difficulty in life. This psalm has several references to distress, fear, falling, and being hated.
But, amidst all the stress of life, we are reminded that this day has been created by God. If for no other reason than this, we should rejoice and be glad that God has given us this day.
It doesn’t matter if it is a warm spring day, a lazy summer day, a dreary foggy day, a rainy day, or a day filled with a bitter cold blizzard. It doesn’t matter if we are prosperous, impoverished, secure, insecure, healthy, or ill. This is a day gifted to us by God.
Life is hard. Life can also be rewarding. In some ways, life is rewarding because it is hard.
In all this, we need to remember that this day is a good gift from the God who loves us. For that, we should be glad and rejoice.
A Quote to Consider:
“In the postmodern Evangelical church, the complexity and subtlety of our humanness–psychological, intellectual, spiritual, and physical–is forced into pragmatic molds, categories, and techniques that “work” only within the reified subculture of the church.”
–Wesley Hurd
Let’s admit it. Church life and real life are not always the same.
There are certain ways we behave in church and methodologies we employ that work in the church subculture.
These things “work” within the sanctified walls of the church but do not always work out in the world. I wonder if that is part of why we end up being so hypocritical.
We live a life divided between two different realities. The reality of the church and the reality of the world.
I wonder, though, if these are really two different realities or if we often just won’t admit to reality when we are in church spaces.
Is the reality that some of the people we “convert” never truly had saving faith in God but responded to the emotional manipulation of our music? Is the reality that we turned a blind eye to leadership abuse? Is the truth that the religious justification for certain positions was never really about convincing, but simply to provide peer pressure so people would concede?
I had a student a few years ago who credited a conversation he had with me for keeping him in the church. All the other conversations he had with other professors did not leave room for his human experience, for the complexity of living in the world today.
It wasn’t that I said anything profound in this discussion. But I didn’t pretend that some simple Christian answer “worked.” I think that gave him space to struggle and maintain faith.
Doubt and faith are not opposites. My favorite Bible verse is Mark 9:24, where the father of a convulsing son admits to Christ, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” Jesus honored that father’s faith.
In the Church, we often can’t be that honest. We think that anything we believe serves God must “work.” I know of Christian universities that believe so much in these pragmatic successes of spiritual success that they only feel good about record enrollments. I know of a university that ended up with $100 million in debt chasing this type of spiritual success.
Being human and living in this world is complex. We need to allow room for doubt and faith. We need to understand that spiritual success does not always mean something “works.”
Prayer
Lord,
Thank You for this day, even in stress and doubt. Help me rejoice not because life is easy, but because You are good and You are with me. Give me honest faith, steady hope, and grace to receive this day as Your gift.
Amen.
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