praise in the dark

But we your people, the sheep of your pasture,

will give thanks to you forever;

from generation to generation we will recount your praise.

Psalm 79:13

The long term vision described at the end of this psalm comes as something of a surprise ending. All of the seventy-ninth psalm is a complaint and a cry for help. It is a post-exilic picture of pain as it opens with the cry to God that gentiles have come into God’s inheritance, defiled the temple, and left Jerusalem in ruins (Psalm 79:1). There is a stark description of dead bodies picked at by vultures (Psalm 79:2), of blood and unburied corpses in the rubble of the destroyed city (Psalm 79:3-4). It is all very grim.

And the psalmist knows this all occurred as just judgment by God on a disobedient people (Psalm 79:5). The psalm cries out for the survivors to repent and for God to deliver the nation and avenge those who now mock Israel and Israel’s God (Psalm 79:8-12). The hope for deliverance, justice, and restoration is all that the survivors have left.

One would not expect theses circumstances to turn the heart to thankfulness and praise. Yet there it is... plain as day at the end of all the horror and pain. God’s people will trust God in their grief. They will thank Him even as He has humbled and chastened their pride. They will praise Him and pass on that worship to the next generation, choosing to make even of their darkest days a worship song to the Lord. Praise in this kind of dark has got to be the most legitimate worship we can know. God’s goodness is greater than the worst thing... the catastrophic thing... the deadliest disasters. When that is known, worship is very, very real.