We need songs we can share—songs that inform our hearts and minds of what is true for the times when we cannot think true things for ourselves. Over five days, Sandra McCracken’s Send Out Your Light plan meditates on the effects of God’s goodness, righteousness, and faithfulness on uncertainty, anger, and fear.
B&H Publishing
Day 1
Scriptures: Psalms 19:4-6, Amos 5:18-27
Prayerful Anger
As much as I like to talk about emotions and the Psalms, anger is still my least favorite emotion. It can be linked to shadow or to light. But it gets a bad reputation and for good reason. Anger can also be clarifying.
For me, the best way to get clear with anger is to throw on my running shoes and head outside. Listening to the quickened rhythm of my breathing and my feet on the pavement can deescalate the energy of anger. It can help me ask the questions instead of just reacting in the emotion. When you start getting to the real questions, you may want to order some new running shoes, just to have on hand.
I can’t always identify where anger comes from in the moment. I have tricky ways of pushing it aside. But it will not be assuaged for long. While I’m trying to figure it out, it helps to feel the wind in my face. The best part of a good run is the speed at the beginning, the exertion of power, and the spending of all that emotion through sweat and, sometimes, tears.
The warmth of God’s light is a good motivation to run like the sun overhead. When we run and when we confront the resistance of anger or injustice, we are acknowledging that there’s something that needs to move.
We run to clear the path and to change something that needs to be made right. We run to answer the call and to complete the circuit. We run to find our way back home. Does that mean we’re supposed to take a different path? And who’s in charge? What do I need to let go of so I can have peace? Often my anger reflects the fact that I’ve been grasping for control. Letting go can release the pressure.
When we see what anger is attempting to accomplish, there can even be joy that mingles with it. We don’t have to be happy about anger, but there can be joyful energy beneath it moving us to see something important. This kind of joy is like the fire of the prophets in the Old Testament. They had a desire for God’s justice, for people to align with God’s righteousness. The Prophets wanted renewal; they wanted God’s order and intentions to be made known. They wanted justice. They wanted mercy.
Even still, God’s Spirit ignites a fire like this beneath us at times when he wants to bring renewal. In broken places within our relationships, our neighborhoods, our social and political systems, we see things that are not as they should be. Anger helps to make the distinction, like cutting the edger into the lawn beside the sidewalk. Here is where the grass stops and the pavement begins.
Sometimes I run until all that’s left is relief and joy. At the end of the run, it feels like I have found my way back to the place where the ocean waves hit the sand. The enemy can reach no further. Here is far enough. You may not be a runner, but finding a constructive trajectory for your emotion is one way to foster your own sanity while under stress.
However, all the cardio efforts will not prove a quick fix for most of the places of complex injustice within us and within our world. In the season when I was running almost every day, my troubles were still there when I got back home and sat down to breathe on my front stoop. The world is in need of renewal. Prayerful anger is a way of aligning with God’s heart for his world. The Psalms give us language for this; they teach us how to express it and how to know him more.
Day 2
Scriptures: Psalms 43, Hebrews 6:19-20
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!
Day 3
Scriptures: Psalms 146:8, Mark 10:51-52
Seeing in the Dark
Recently a friend told a story about their family’s visit to the zoo. Their young son stood behind thick glass, just inches away from a lion. After a few delightful moments of smiling and pressing right up close to the powerful cat, all of a sudden, the lion was startled by something, turned, and swiped aggressively at the glass between him and the child. No doubt, if the glass had not been there, the child would have been badly injured.
Even though there was no real danger in this scene, the boy and the boy’s parents received quite a scare. While we might be held secure by our faith, at the same time, an abuse of power or other adversities can produce the sensation of danger, and fear can be as real and present in our experience as the racing heartbeat of that little boy at the zoo.
And to our defense, our friend and Savior Jesus comes to advocate for us, to stand between us and danger—actual or perceived. Even before we can name or anticipate what we need, he inclines toward us, inviting us to find our protection, our strength, and our comfort in him.
Jesus meets the man named Bartimaeus in Mark 10:51-52 (TRANSLATION HERE): “‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Jesus asked him. The blind man said, ‘Rabbi, I want to see.’ ‘Go,’ said Jesus, ‘your faith has healed you.’ Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.”
I have a hard time answering that question: what do you want me to do for you? I have a hard time acknowledging my own blindness. But in God’s kindness, He illuminates our spiritual blindness through His word, through the conviction of His Spirit, and He draws out a request from our lips: “Teacher, I want to see.”
In Psalm 43, the Psalmist picks up the practice that Jesus is trying to teach us in Mark’s gospel. In this instance, the Psalmist asks an echo of Jesus’ question, “What do you want me to do for you?”
“Why are you downcast, o my soul?” (Ps 43:10)
This question is another way of saying, “Hey, what is wrong? Can you name what you’re feeling?”
Jesus does not dismiss the dissonance of our complaints; He does not deny our blindness but moves quickly to meet us in our prayers of faith. Mark’s gospel gives us Jesus’ reply:
“‘Go, your faith has healed you.’ Immediately [Bartimaeus] received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.”
While sometimes I’m tempted to hide or to change the subject, psalms like Psalm 43 give me permission to feel downcast and to ask for the healing that I need. A blind man cannot make himself see. Anxiety loves darkness, often causing more trouble when it goes unnamed. But if you can name your blindness—your need for healing—to Jesus, he is faithful to heal. He can bring light to your eyes and sight to your spiritual blindness.
Day 4
Scriptures: Lamentations 2:19, Proverbs 4:23
Light Bearers
The human heart is a deep well. Throwing a bucket down there to see what’s in the depths may be scary, but it often dispels the fear or shame that lurks below. When I pour out my heart to God like water from a deep well, I am often relieved. Sometimes, I’ve expected to pull up new monsters from those deep places, but instead I’ve found explanations or insights that have helped me to confess or to learn. Shame shrivels up when you bring it out into the sunlight of God’s love. The Scriptures invite us to voice our buried questions, so that the wellspring of our hearts can flow freely in the presence of the Lord. God draws out our questions to carve out the free, flowing springs of life that He intended to supply within us.
While the end result of questions may not be answers, the end result of God’s grace in anger and prayerful experience of the Psalms is not fear or further injury but freedom, joy, and hope. By identifying our need, things we may have avoided out of fear often turn to reveal an opportunity for discovery—freedom from working so hard to hide our weaknesses.
The fear of what we try to bury is not always in proportion to the actual danger. Many times when I am anxious and awake at night, the things I am afraid of are not as vivid in the daylight. The fear that is known, confronted, and brought into view does not have the power that it does in the shadows.
Perfect love casts out fear and brings us back into orbit with one another. When we are no longer trying to hide or manage the monsters that wave for our attention, we have been made free and available for love and community.
There will always be need. There will always be more we can do. Sometimes the need is a call to prayer; at other times the need is also a call to action. It’s often hard to know the difference. We are light-bearers, carrying his light out into the needy world.
If you sing out a melody across an open canyon, sometimes you can hear the reverberation of the song before you can pinpoint the melody. But when God calls, it is a sure thing. God calls us through our warbly-sounding emotions. He prompts and presents his clear voice to us when we are listening for it.
Day 5
Scriptures: 1 Samuel 1, 1 Samuel 2, 1 Samuel 3, John 8:12
Wake Up to Send Out Your Light
In 1 Samuel, God calls praise from the lips of a little boy named Samuel. Samuel is a special child: long-awaited, prayed for, and given to the service of the Lord. Before he becomes a mighty priest and prophet, he’s a little boy who has just moved out of his mother’s arms and into a new life in the temple. His mother, Hannah, who had longed for him, prayed for him in earnest.
And now he’s here with his whole life beginning and with learning the life of the priesthood. In the middle of the night, on one of his first nights in this new place, God calls him three times by name. The first two times, Samuel runs to Eli, the priest, trying to figure out who is calling him. The third time, Eli explains that it is God’s voice calling him. And Eli directs him to listen and to hear God’s voice.
Sometimes I’m like little Samuel, unfamiliar with the sound of God’s voice and barely awake. I keep running to answer someone else by mistake. And sometimes I’m like Eli, the priest who is in the next room, helping to direct someone else to hear and to answer their own call.
As for Samuel, his listening life goes on a long time, recorded in the pages of 1 and 2 Samuel. Samuel heard and gave voice to God’s voice in the service of the King. The voices we hear and attend to make the difference between a life of frenetic energy and a life of quiet reception. When Samuel sat still and listened, God’s voice spoke to him right there where he was.
The call we hear and how we reply is the very essence of our spiritual life. You don’t have to be a monk; you don’t even have to be “religious.” You just have to be receptive. And this, too, is a gift.
“Send out your light” is the beginning of the story even when it happens in the middle of the story. Even our anger can be woven into his good purposes. It’s the call, the need, and the voice that wakes you up in the night. God has a purpose and a plan for your life. And sometimes He has to get us out of bed so we can pay attention to it.