Daily Devotional: Joy & Celebration: Let Everything Praise

This is an opinion column.

FULL JOY

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.”
Psalm 150:6

REFLECTION

The Psalter ends here. One hundred and fifty psalms, ranging from the heights of praise to the depths of lament, from songs of victory to honest cries of abandonment, from the crowded celebration of the temple to the lonely voice of a man in the wilderness. All of it, every note of the human experience before God, arrives at this single sentence. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. The whole journey ends in praise. And that is not an accident.

The Hebrew word for praise in this psalm is halal, which is where we get hallelujah. It means to shine, to boast, to celebrate extravagantly. It is not a quiet word. It is not a restrained, dignified, indoor word. It is the word you use when the thing you are celebrating is so much bigger than you that ordinary expression simply does not cover it. Halal is the sound of someone who has run out of ways to say how good God is and has decided to just keep saying it anyway.

• Let everything that has breath. Not just the people who feel like it this morning. Not just the ones whose week went well. Everything.
• The grieving voice and the celebrating voice. The confused voice and the confident one. The new believer and the one who has been walking with God for sixty years.
• All of it. All of us. Every breath that draws air does so in a world God made, sustained by a God who holds it together, headed toward a future God has secured.
• That is reason enough. That is more than enough. That is everything.

We have spent this week exploring the many dimensions of joy: the joy that holds in hardship, the joy that produces strength, the joy that is chosen rather than waited for, the joy that comes from knowing God delights in us. It all arrives here. At the end of the longest book of poetry in Scripture, after every kind of human experience has been brought before God honestly, the final word is praise.

Not because everything is resolved. Not because every question has been answered. Not because the hard things stopped being hard. But because the God who made everything that has breath is worthy of every breath that has been made. And when you know that, really know it, the only response left is to open your mouth and let it out.

Looking back over this week, what specific reasons for praise has God given you that you may not have named yet, and what would it look like for you to close this week with an act of full, unheld, extravagant praise to the God who made you, redeemed you, and rejoices over you?

PRAYER

Lord, we praise You. Not because we have it all figured out. Not because this week was perfect. Not because the road ahead looks easy. But because You are God. Because You made us. Because You saved us. Because You are present. Because You are faithful. Because You sing over us. Because You made this day. Because Your joy is our strength. Because nothing can separate us from Your love. We have breath today because You gave it, and we give it back to You in praise. Hallelujah. Amen.