Psalm 108

"I will wake up the dawn'

Psalm 108 is a curiosity. Some scholars describe Psalm 108 as a "mosaic" psalm as it combines material from two different psalms. Some lines are taken from Psalm 57.7–11:

My heart is confident, God, my heart is confident.
I will sing; I will sing praises.
Wake up, my soul!
Wake up, harp and lyre!
I will wake up the dawn.
I will praise you, Lord, among the peoples;
I will sing praises to you among the nations.
For your faithful love is as high as the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches the clouds.
God, be exalted above the heavens;
let your glory be over the whole earth.

These lines become verses 1–5 of Psalm 108. Other lines are taken from Psalm 60.5–12:

Save with your right hand, and answer me,
so that those you love may be rescued.

God has spoken in his sanctuary:
“I will celebrate!
I will divide up Shechem.
I will apportion the Valley of Succoth.
Gilead is mine, Manasseh is mine,
and Ephraim is my helmet;
Judah is my scepter.
Moab is my washbasin.
I throw my sandal on Edom;
I shout in triumph over Philistia.”

Who will bring me to the fortified city?
Who will lead me to Edom?
God, haven’t you rejected us?
God, you do not march out with our armies.
Give us aid against the foe,
for human help is worthless.
With God we will perform valiantly;
he will trample our foes.

These lines become verses 6–13 of Psalm 108.

So, what's going on with this?

Scholars think that the lament we find expressed in Psalm 60 is being recast with the more hopeful and confident praise of Psalm 57. Perhaps this is due to historic experience. A lament that had been used to express loss in a liturgical context needs to be updated to reflect a positive change in circumstance. The lament doesn't disappear and remains as the ache of memory. But today is a day of rejoicing. Today is a day to wake up the dawn with music and praise.

I think about the "mosaic" that is my own spiritual life, a lot of which has been in public view. I've been writing online since 2007 and publishing books since 2011. The first decade of my online writing would. today, be described as a season of "deconstruction." I was metaphysically agnostic. I talked a lot about doubt. Attracted to those blog reflections, in 2010 I got an email from a young writer who had a new book coming out about her own spiritual journey with questions and doubts. The book was entitled Evolving in Monkey Town, written by the late Rachel Held Evans. Rachel asked if I wanted an advance copy to review. That started a lovely friendship. Like many of you, I think of Rachel often. We miss her terribly.

First glimpsed in The Slavery of Death, my writing started to reflect a turn in my spiritual life, toward what today we'd call "reconstruction." Attentive readers of my books should see the connection between The Slavery of Death and my latest book The Shape of Joy. The "eccentric identity" first explored in The Slavery of Death becomes "the outward turn" in The Shape of Joy.

In the chapter "Sunlight or Shadows?" in The Shape of Joy I use Plato's allegory of the cave to describe this "outward turn," how we must leave the "cave" of the self-referential and noisy ego, a self-esteem project exhausted by hero games of significance (long time readers will also notice how Ernest Becker is still showing up in my books), to step out into the sunlight in an encounter with a sacred and transcendent reality. Like Psalm 108, the mosaic of my life is on display the concluding passage of this chapter. Once in shadows, I now stand in sunlight. Prior doubts have given way to joy:

Perhaps you have had a transcendent, spiritual experience...You might be a mystic, religious, or a deeply spiritual person. You might believe in God or a Higher Power. If so, you need no convincing that the sun is real. You see the world shining. You experience the wonder and awe looking into the eyes of another human being. You get chills witnessing a random act of kindness. You already know that joy has an eccentric shape, that happiness and wholeness are found in resting outside of yourself. You’ve already left the cave. But some of us continue to need a bit more convincing. I wrote this chapter for you, the doubters and skeptics, those who question the invisible facts of life and have settled for shadows. You think that transcendence is a figment of your imagination. A fairy tale to help us cope with the sadness and tragedy of life.

I sympathize. I once shared those very same doubts. But if the chatter of your mind has gotten too loud, if the bike pump of your superhero complex is exhausting you, if your life has lost resonance, if the world no longer shines for you, if you are exhausted from carrying the weight of your own worthlessness, well, can I suggest that maybe it’s time to get up and leave the cave? The word transcendence comes from Latin words meaning “to go beyond.” Joy starts by going beyond yourself. And that includes your doubts and skepticism. It’s not enough to step back from yourself, as helpful as that is. You have to step outside. The invisible facts of the world are shining around you.

Sunlight or shadows?

The choice is yours.