This is the day that the LORD has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.
We sang this as a bouncy chorus once too often when I was a little boy and only recently have I been able to experience this truth again. This is not an injunction to ignore injustice, to pretend there are no problems, or to plaster a smiley face sticker over a gaping wound. That this is the Day of the Lord is a truth and the Psalm where it is found gives reasons for the joy and the reasons do not deny a single fact we might be facing. We can have joy and sorrow simultaneously just as we know defeat and ultimate victory in the same moment.
Christians are constantly losing, but we never lose.
The truth of the Psalm is about Israel and Jesus.
If I am too hasty to apply verses to self, they become absurd, false, or arrogant. The Bible is about the Kingdom of God, His chosen people, and the Messiah: Jesus. Few things are worse than pretending my experience is like that of Jesus, my first-world suffering is nothing compared to the Cross and a total alienation from God. Nobody but Jesus has ever experienced this alienation and because of Jesus nobody must.
The best news is that I can appropriate salvation history and live in it. I can choose to view my story as my story or I can look at my story as part of the history of the Kingdom of God. When I am depressed and life is going badly, I must not deny reality. Things are tough for me and they do not always turn out well before Heaven. Centuries of martyrdom, some of it happening now on the other side of the world, proves that for an individual, life-in-the-short-term can be heart wrenching. If you were martyred by the Romans, the torture hurt even if the Church was ultimately triumphant.
God never fails His people, but it sure can feel that way in the middle of troubles. This is one reason the Psalms keep pointing us to Israel’s sacred history. Four hundred years of slaves died in the mud of Egypt, but they were part of the Exodus. They were liberated because they found their inner life in the people of God and not in their individual story. If the score is kept with reality in mind, then Jesus Christ is victor even when hanging on the Cross. The vile cross of the Romans is made the Holy Cross with precious wood and sweet iron in the grand story that God is telling.
I can be realistic and jolly if I associate myself with the bigger story and not my particular tale.
God became man so we could become like God. He did not become “like” we are now.
Even better news is that if I associate myself with the divine plan and count on Eternity to right all wrongs, then I am relying on the justice of God. People may let me down. I know this because I let me down! God will not be hasty and fix what I wish God would fix since God is fixing everything that can and will go wrong. God will not give me a happy day so that I can have the Day that He has made.
I can rejoice and be glad in it even if it contains grotesqueries because the Day of the Lord has God standing behind the Day. He will make it all good or there is no good to be had!
We are heading every day to a city where a festival is happening!
Today might be a day where in my story things are very bad. I am sad. The world is unjust. Laughter would be a sick joke. Nobody should deny this or practice the fakery of cheering up about the day. I must say and acknowledge the truth: “This day that humanity has made, with my help, is bad and I dislike it . . . a lot.” And then I can think of Jesus, not myself, but Jesus. Jesus is Lord. Jesus has built a Kingdom and I am in it now and this Kingdom is a constant party.
I cannot feel it and will do nothing to manufacture feelings, but will still look upward to the greater reality. It does not make me feel better that the City of God is coming and is now (in a spiritual sense), but it is true! This truth is solid, so solid that it gives me a deep and abiding jollification. This is how even martyrs, facing far worse than most of us today, can smile an inner smile. Things are bad, but in the long term, things will be great. Things are going to get worse for me, but that only means it is better.
The Kingdom of Heaven is one big party.
The Psalm is realistic because it is written by people who suffered. David, the greatest of the Psalmists, ended his life impotent, cold, and miserable. His family was divided and his kingdom was in danger . . . and then he died. Yet David was a man after God’s heart and so died miserably and triumphantly. . David was defeated, Christ is victory and Christ was not just David’s son. Why should a dying David care about an heir he would never see? Christ was also David’s King! Christ was victor and would defeat death so that David’s pain was a prelude to pleasure.
The pleasure takes up the pain and makes it worthwhile in the greater context. The party subsumes the pitiable state of broken men because the broken men can be healed and taken into the party. Our very broken bones can be strengthened.
This is the Day that the Lord has made. I can live in it and live in the day humanity has made. Both will be real to me but the greater can swallow up the lesser. And so whatever today holds I rejoice and am glad, not in the sin, sorrow, or suffering, but in that Eternal Day of the Lord where my heart dwells safe, secure, and jolly.
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