Stubborn Hope
Psalm 23
Psalm 23 is one of the better known Psalms. It’s in pop culture, it is in hip hop. It’s a Psalm I personally put in every funeral I officiate as clergy (unless I am asked not to). It’s personal for me, and is deeply involved with how I passed through my first significant journey of grief as an adult when my father died in 2016
I want to share with you what I wrote about this Psalm in my journal that I was keeping at that time. It was related to when I was a choir director and I had arranged a hymn paraphrase of the Psalm for choir and how the process of writing the music and having my choir at the time rehearse it impacted me.
“I moonlight as a composer, and decided to arrange for choir an anthem using a tune called RESIGNATION to which Isaac Watt's adaptation of Psalm 23 is often set. I wrote it early on so that I would have ample opportunity to provide ample rehearsal time with my choir and also to give me an opportunity to make edits based on what I was hearing from them.
One evening something happened within me in response to how the choir sang it. Something snapped into place that connected me to my ongoing process of grieving Papa well for the first time. In response to that and also to direct them to sing a portion of the anthem a certain way I paused and spoke to them about my choice to have them sing the final verse of this anthem at a loud dynamic level.
The text I was referring to said, "The sure provisions of my God attend me all my days; O may your house be my abode, and all my work be praise. There would I find a settled rest, while others go and come; no more a stranger, nor a guest, but like a child at home." I told them that it is important to sing this text with a strong and loud dynamic instead of one that is soft and calm--for who really feels soft, calm and assured in the midst of deep grief?
This text seems to portray a sense of confidence about God's provision and assurance of our inheritance as children of God. But in the midst of grief and loss when our minds are most likely to turn toward thinking about eternal life and resurrection when does confidence in God's provision ever become a natural state of mind? No, the reason I wanted them to sing that section forte is because, in grief, there is a level of stubbornness with which we must sing things like that.
There is a stubborn confidence in God's provision--a stubborn hope in our inheritance as children of God in eternal life. Taking hold of the immense ways in which we are blessed, and getting to a point where "all our work be praise," is the point at which we find our "settled rest while others go and come."
As I was describing these thoughts to my choir, it occured to me that Psalm 23 goes beyond being a psalm of comfort. Isaac Watt's interpretation brings us to the main point at the end--that we are "no more a stranger, nor a guest, but like a child at home" when we take hold of the hope that has been given to us. In life, or death, we are children of God. Our eternal life is as sure as the fact that we are "adopted as God's children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of God'swill." (Ephesias 1:5)
It is this place of joy that we find in life where we can experience resurrection. Losing my father and becoming more intimate with that kind of grief has opened parts of my soul that had been closed. Recovering a capacity for empathy and compassion through this was a kind of resurrection--a resuscitation of a part of myself that had been closed and blocked by the personality into which I have grown as an adult. It was a recovery of a part of my true self.”
Shadowed valleys, evil and enemies aren’t powerful enough to defeat the size of hope God gives us. That is what I take home with me about Psalm 23.
I was blessed by my mentor in college who brought his choir to Dallas back when I wrote this choral anthem and allowed me to conduct them in singing the anthem I arranged. Here it is:
