This is the Day

This is the day  the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118:24

As we do every week, we come to worship this Sunday filled with a variety of emotions. This Sunday, those emotions may feel even weightier than usual. It has a been a week!

Throughout this week, the words of Psalm 118:24 have been running through my head, especially on my morning drive to work. This day - and every day - is of the Lord’s making. The powers of this world do not cause the sun to rise or set. That is God’s doing. For me, that has been a helpful grounding point. The rising of the sun is something in which I have been able to rejoice. 

Sometimes, I think our society pushes us too quickly to get to the point of being “okay.” When it comes to grief - whether at the death of a loved one or an impactful life event - there’s this need for us to get over it. Sitting in other people’s discomfort, hurt, pain and fear can be uncomfortable. So, we want to rush to things being “okay” once again. 

You don’t have to be “okay” yet. Whether your candidate won or lost the election, you can feel unsettled with what and how things are unfolding. We can hold space for one another without rushing through the discomfort. 

As people of faith, we can not be okay and wake up each day to give thanks that God, the Creator of the universe, is causing the sun to rise. Rising and setting each day, the sun is our reminder that God is not yet done with us or our world. Living in that certainty, we can rejoice and be glad. We grieve with hope. We grieve and rejoice that God is God. We grieve and sit in the discomfort knowing that God sits with us, too. 

It is okay to not be okay right now. Grief doesn’t need to be rushed. And, each morning when the sun breaks on the horizon bringing about a new day, let’s be sure to rejoice. God’s got this. God’s got us.