Published With Thanksgiving

Psalm 30

Over the past two weeks I’ve been to two graduations. Long commencement speakers aside, I really do enjoy the pomp and ceremony of these rituals. Like any rite, they are moments of transformation. Those receiving their bachelor’s degree enter with tassels on the right and leave with them on the left. Robed men and women reemerge with colorful hoods draping down their backs. A chapter is closed and a new one begun in the space of a sunny afternoon.

Graduations mean something to friends and family just as they do to the person receiving their diploma, since they are the ones who know the story behind the day. In a way, it’s a shame that there isn’t enough space to give a brief history of the person walking across the stage. Perhaps they excelled in their studies and have finished in three-and-a-half years. Maybe they’ve been working hard through a decade of nights and weekends, balancing work and children and personal tragedies, all to reach this momentous day.

Watching the students receive their diplomas this morning, I couldn’t help thinking about the oft-quoted line from one of the Psalms for today. “In the evening, weeping will spend the night and in the morning: a cry of jubilation.” Too often, I think, we can be too glib with these powerful words. We say them as if to promise some sort of brevity to our own or, worse, another’s suffering. But that isn’t how the Psalmist uses them at all. Though it seemed in the good times that he would not be shaken for a long, long time, this didn’t mean that the times of dis-ease felt any less endless. The time when sorrow would finally pass must have seemed as distant as morning during a restless night.

As spouses and parents and loved ones let out joyful cries this morning, I wondered how many of the graduates had once thought their long night of sadness would never end. The student who lost a father in her first year of studies, who saw her grades plummet and her life fall apart, had she ever wondered if day would come? The young man who had, halfway through his studies, realized that what he’d always dreamed of being was not what he was meant to be, had he ever questioned if the sun would rise? And did any, in the midst of papers or exams, ever doubt that they would wake up at this dawning?

We who are resting in the seemingly eternal untroubled period cannot promise when the new day will begin. Those who are awake while everyone else rests cannot be certain that this night is without a dawn. All we can do is sit and wait. And, if we listen together, we may be surprised to hear a stone beginning to sing as it moves to let something completely new come forth.

God of new beginnings, help us to weep with those in the night and rejoice with all who have seen the first light of morning.