The text: Psalm 116 – NRSV
On this Holy Saturday, the penultimate step on our journey, we come to a truly beautiful song of thanksgiving. Psalm 116, on its surface, is a prayer of thanksgiving to God for deliverance from a close encounter with death. Whether from illness, injury, or an attack we do not know, and need not know since the prayer can easily apply to any of these and many other less dire but stressful situations. But on this day, and as a Christian, I cannot read this without imagining the Christ speaking the words, as one person of the Trinity giving thanks to another. Read it today, and watch the darkness of Good Friday begin to fade before the dawn of tomorrow. Read it tomorrow and bask in the thanksgiving for the restoration—no, the creation of new life. On the second day of this journey we lifted up Psalm 30, another song of thanksgiving that points to the importance of approaching any situation with gratitude first, which then changes the hue of whatever the situation was before. I pray that you can now look back over this Lenten journey, wherever it has taken you, and be thankful. With that in mind, you have an marvelous excuse to read Psalm 116 once more.
Curious about this series of posts? Read the initial post.
Want to catch up on any you missed? See them all by clicking on ‘Lenten Psalms” below.
