Yet Even at the Grave
AM Psalm 87, 90 • PM Psalm 136
Isa. 61:10-62:5 • 2 Tim. 4:1-8 • Mark 10:46-52
Psalm 136, our Psalm for the evening, is incessantly repeats the chorus “for his steadfast love endures forever.” It repeats this phrase (sometimes translated as “for his mercy endures forever”) twenty-six times. During my first reading, I began to skim quickly through the words thinking to myself, “I get it, God loves us, moving on, next reading...”
When I feel the urge to brush past something in a reading, that is always where my attention is needed the most. As I sat with this Psalm longer, its placement in the evening struck me as important. At the end of the day, when the hours are dark in this seemingly endless winter, when I am tired and ready for sleep, maybe (the Psalm seemed to be saying) is when I most need the repetition of this phrase. A phrase so simple yet so profound in its truth.
As the heaviness of the world weighs me down, this Psalm peeks through as a quiet little gift, letting me know, through the very structure of the poem, that it will carry me when I am too tired to carry myself. By repeating “for his steadfast love endures forever” over and over, this Psalm embodies the act of God’s love itself. It gives me permission to be exhausted and broken, ready to skim past, but never relents its seeking and yearning for my participation with it.
I am reminded of the words said during the Commendation at funerals, “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” The repetitiveness of that ‘Alleluia,” that persistence, reminds me that God’s love pierces through our realities, even at their most dark, most endless, most hopeless. In moments of loss, grief, and exhaustion, when we have seemingly nothing to cling to, there is God’s love, steadfast and patient, ready to carry us through. That is something worthy of praise indeed.
Written by Emma Mitchell
When not serving the youth and families at St. Paul’s as the Youth Director, Emma enjoys a good craft project, a thrifting adventure, and hanging out with her husband Dave and small menagerie of animals.