I praise you, Lord, for you raised me up. // Psalm 30:2
“This is the Lentiest Lent that ever Lented,” my dear friend declared, way back at the beginning of Lent in 2020. We were all trying to figure out what it meant to live in a global pandemic while never leaving our houses. Now, two years later, a lot of things still don’t make sense. It feels like a never-ending slog . . . two steps forward, one step back, wondering if life will ever be the way we used to think was normal, wondering what the new normal will look like, wondering how long it will be before we have answers to some of these questions.
This psalm is so familiar that I hardly think about it. I will praise You, Lord, You have rescued me. I think I’ve always assumed that the rescue had just happened. I’m praising You right now, because You just rescued me. Hooray! Thanks, God!
But what if the Psalmist is praising God right now in the midst of trouble . . . not because God has just acted to end that trouble, but because of all the ways God has acted in the past?
You have rescued me.
Maybe this doesn’t have the immediacy I’ve always thought it had.
Maybe that rescue happened a long time ago.
When God is promising in Isaiah in the First Reading that He is about to do A Thing, God means what He says.
Maybe we cannot see it quite yet, but we can trust it.
If God says A Thing is coming, it will come. We know it will because we know God has done A Thing before. Many Things, actually. The history of salvation is the story of All The Things God Has Done . . . and not just for those people a long time ago. For us. For you and for me.
That is why we praise Him.
Life is not perfect right now, but we know that we are perfectly loved by a God Who has acted many times in the past.
God’s got this one covered, too.
We praise Him in advance.
God, I’m stuck. It’s hard, and I can’t see a way out. But I know You are with me, and I trust that You have my best interests at heart and that You are always faithful. Thank You, in advance, for always rescuing me. Amen.
We praise Him in advance. // Abbey DupuyClick to tweet
Abbey Dupuy holds a masters in liturgical music from Saint John’s University and works in parish liturgical ministry. She and her husband and four children are transplants to Minnesota. In her spare time, she loves cross-country skiing, gardening, coffee, and reading cookbooks, not usually at the same time. She is a contributing author to our children’s devotional prayer book, Rise Up and author of our Blessed Conversations: The Virtues.
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