Dear Faith Family,
Hallelujah, as we learned on Easter Sunday, is a universal reflex, an essentially human response that bursts from our lips when our ears hear and eyes see the goodness of life manifest. Hallelujah, “Praise God,” life is good!
Whether as a reaction to a favorable prognosis, a response to provision received, flowing from relief at a trial's end, spilling forth in rejoicing at an expectation met, or as an exhaled near whisper in the rest of remembering what has been and will be again; Hallelujah springs forth when we can see the goodness in life fully, even if only in a glance. In this way, Hallelujah is an expression of revelation, revealing the essential nature of reality: the goodness of God.
Perhaps that’s why our New Testament saves the word Hallelujah until the full view of the end is in clear sight. The four uses of the word all make their presence heard in Revelation 19 at "the marriage supper of the Lamb." As ubiquitous as the word may be, and as thoroughly as it has traversed every known language while keeping its Hebrew origin, hallelujah is saved as a response to marriage, the union of Jesus and His Church, a vision of unhindered communion in community and covenant. Hallelujah, Praise God, for life is God with us captured at the ceremony of love, the celebration marking true love, testifying to love's work, witnessing love shared, and remembering love's commitment. A vision of life with God and others as it should be, because it is. Praise God, life is indeed, and at its essence, good!
While the expression of hallelujah is universal, everyone, even the godless, experience, at some point, moments of hallelujah, the goodness of life; the truth is, if we want to live in the goodness of life as our daily reality, another universal word is required: Amen, “Yes.”
Amen is our yes to life with God and all His Yes in covenant and communion demands. We say Amen, says Rabbi Heschel, “to keep alive the higher Yes…to teach our minds to understand the true demand [of life with God] and teach our conscience to be present," to God’s Yes:
For all the promises of God find their Yes in Jesus.
That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen
to God for his glory.
And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ…
given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
(2 Corinthians 1:20-22)
Hallelujah and Amen. These words bring our daily living into the reality of the goodness of life, life in union with God. So, how do we get these words into our regular vocabulary, spilling from our souls into our work and relationships? We pray!
Well, more specifically, we pray the Psalms. The Psalms, as we mentioned on the final Sunday of Lent, is where we learn to respond to the reality of life; life as fundamentally good because God is fundamental to life.
The psalms are where these words are repeated amid every imaginable human experience and circumstance. Nothing is left out. No pain or joy. Not prosperity nor persecution. Not faith nor doubt. No praise nor petition. No loss nor anticipation. Everything, internal and external, is voiced. And in that voicing, over and over again, we find the words Hallelujah and Amen. Here, we are taught to pray in the reality (sometimes despite the immediate evidence) that we live today in the goodness of life, life with God, hallelujah(!). So we conclude not with a wishful “please” but a responsive “Amen”…Yes to life with God today, tomorrow, and always.
So, faith family, in full view of the goodness of life, of the Life given for us and to us in Jesus, I invite you to start this new “Christian” “Jesus-Joined” year (remember, Easter marks our beginning!) and Do What Jesus Did: make praying the psalms daily our school and response.
You can find a printable schedule to guide you here, as well as other resources to aid you in committing to this school of prayer here.
Once you pick which schedule you’ll follow, share that with your Gospel Community, DNA group, spiritual companions, spouse, or even a co-worker. Invite them to pray it with you, or at least ask you about life through these words.
May Hallelujah and Amen find their way into our hearts, up to our lips, and into our lives today and tomorrow, until forever is all we see.
Love you, faith family! God bless.