Send Out Your Light: A 5-Day Plan With Sandra MccrackenSample

DAY 2: Anger and Hope

The words of Psalm 43 have been like that edge line between the pavement and the lawn to me—the boundary line of my emotion. God has used these words to give shape to my soul when I have moved through times of transition. Right in the middle of this psalm about justice and worship comes the high point there in verse 4. 

“Send out your light” rings out like a trumpet calling over the hills. This personal cry from the Psalmist has surprised me in more than a few pointed moments when I was not expecting the sound. I heard it in an Episcopal church in Washington D.C. while passing through. A friend texted it to me in the middle of the night. It kept showing up in the liturgy, in the prayer book, and in my readings. 

On one early afternoon, I sat at my kitchen bar in the sunlight with the Bible open and my guitar across my knees. I sang it straight from the page just like we later recorded it in Brooklyn. It was like praying it from the page, in my own voice, but nearly just as written. It sang off the page like a new, old-fashioned anthem. At the time, I was disoriented. I was angry. I was clinging to God’s salvation, his mercy over me, and praise was my protest. It was the joy after the run. 

This was my own spontaneous voicing of this Psalm:

“Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause

against the deceitful man, Oh deliver us.

For you are the God in whom I take refuge;

why have you rejected me?

I walk around confused.

Send out your light and your truth;

let them lead me;

Bring me to your holy hill, to your dwelling

Then I will go to the altar of God,

to God my exceeding joy,

and I will praise you with my guitar,

O my joy, my joy.

Why are you cast down low, O my soul,

and why are you cast down low, and in turmoil?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

Hope in God; for he is my salvation!"

- Send Out Your Light (Psalm 43)

 Praise is not just an accessory to a relationship with God. When it comes out of us, it comes almost from the marrow, the spine, the center. Prayer is the heartbeat of faith. And it is something we can practice. We can habit it as it inhabits us. Praise is what we are made for, whether we are religious or not, affectionate or independent, emotional or stoic, republican or democrat, rich or poor. God has made us in his image and filled us with his light uniquely and personally. And he calls praise from our lips, on the hilltops calling us to resound with a living hope.

Anger and hope may not seem to fit together, but for the person formed, shaped, and loved by God, they are two inescapable realities. Righteous anger grows as our hearts are aligned to the kingdom of God, and we see ever more clearly, this world is not the way it ought to be. But hope comes on anger’s heels, telling us this world is not yet the way it will be. Hope in God; for he is my salvation!