Rejoice and Be Glad! All You Who Obey Him

Psalm 32:11

Be glad in YHWH,
and rejoice, righteous ones,
and shout for joy, all upright in heart!

Is it paradoxical for a Penitential Psalm to sound so joyous and victorious? In Eugene Peterson’s The Message, words and phrases like “lucky”, “garlands of hosannas”, “celebrate”, “sing”, and “raise the roof” jumped out at me. They were not words I had commonly associated with confession and penitence.

Yet on second thought, should not roof-raising, victorious singing and hosannas-garlanding be but the most natural response of one who has received ultimate forgiveness from the Almighty? Restoration to the Father’s side upon confession is a restoration too precious and privileged not to rejoice over.

Ps 32:1-2 helps us appreciate the full extent of God’s forgiveness through its use of synonymous parallelism. He who confesses is happy or upbeat because not only are his sins lifted up, they are covered and put out of sight, to the extent that God no longer holds him accountable. It is a complete forgiveness that wipes clean our appalling account books, without us doing anything but to confess in penitence. This undeserved grace deserves our response of glad thanksgiving.

If I could have picked my own name it might have been the female version of Isaac, which is derived from the Hebrew word for “laughter”. From young, God has blessed me with the capacity to laugh easily at the simplest of things, and friends, even strangers, have often remarked the same. But there were also many times in life when laughing was the last thing I wanted to do.

During one such down period, I happened to read a senior’s OT Theology paper about laughter. It helped me see that laughter, rooted in the context of a right Creator-creation relationship, could be a powerful theological symbol of liberation, triumph, and thanksgiving. My joy was often based on favourable circumstances, but when those went away, so did my joy. Yet there is a reason for joy and laughter that can never be taken away from me—my relationship with the Almighty, based solely on his forgiveness of my sins. That itself is sufficient reason to spend my days in deep-seated joy, even in the midst of unjoyful circumstances.

What makes you happy? Getting As? Answered prayer? Amicable friends? Today, choose to rejoice simply in the Almighty who has forgiven you in Christ and is always waiting to forgive when you turn to him.

Esther Peh
(M.Div., Yr 2)