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I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him. (Psalm 40:1-3)

At the reception following Kevin’s funeral yesterday, I heard some version of the same comment pass over a few people’s lips.  It was a noticing that in this same space of visitation and funeral over the past couple days laughter and weeping, smiles and tears were often layered over top of one another.  A memory that brings a laugh in one corner of the room while a confrontation with the weight of loss cracks into weeping and embrace in the other.  Sometimes these two very different emotions poured out of the same person at the same time.

And that is exactly how life is.  The good and the bad get all stirred up together in ways that we just can’t pull apart so easily.  Experience continues to defy our categories and our desire for simplicity.

Psalm 40 testifies to the same.  It opens with a strong word of praise and thanks to God.  We pray: God answers.  We’re in trouble: God pulls us up from the slimy pit and sets our feet back on solid rock. 

But if you would continue reading the psalm, you would find other experiences intertwined.  “Do not withhold your mercy from me, Lord... for troubles without number surround me,” the psalmist writes.  The psalm finally ends with the simple prayer “you are my God, do not delay.”

Both of these prayers were prayed yesterday too.  The prayer of thanks that Kevin has been healed and made whole in the presence of God was there.  Jesus has lifted him out of the mud and mire and set his feet on the rock.  Kevin will never again be shaken.  Thanks be to God.

And yet, in his death, a gaping wound of emptiness and loss has just been violent ripped into the lives of so many others.  Even as Kevin has been lifted out of the pit, so many others have fallen in.  And so the other prayer is there too: “do not withhold your mercy from them, Lord... you are their God, do not delay.”

These two prayers are stirred up together in ways that we just can’t pull apart so easily.  Just like in the psalm, the paradox can’t be resolved in either direction.  It can only be lived.  Prayed.  Sung.  Grieved. 

At least, that’s the way it is here and now in this life.  There will come a day though when the first words of the psalm become the final words for all of us.  A day when God himself will resolve the paradox and finally bring our dissonate chords to harmony. 

And that’s ultimately what keeps us living and praying.  That’s what keeps the confession of this God on our lips whether our prayer is praise or lament.  We trust that Jesus will return to lift us all up to a solid place, that he will put a new song on all our lips.  We trust not just that Kevin is whole, but that one day we will be too: reunited with him, with one another, and with our Lord, forever. 

But until that day: we sing and pray and live the paradox that we’ve been given.  Lives of both tears and laughter.  Prayers of intersession and thanks.  Songs of sorrow, but also of hope.