Not One Hallelujah to Give

This isn't the first year that I felt like I didn't have one hallelujah to give. It was only a year ago that celebrating Easter for my mom, my sisters, and myself meant that for the first time, dad was a part of the witness of saints who await the resurrection of their bodies which now lay in the ground. Only for dad, he awaited at the feet of Jesus. He was already home. Singing, in the fullest and most final form, "Hallelujah" maybe even face to face with the Risen King.

I remember weeping last Easter. Weeping, because the idea of the Resurrection had changed for me. I had someone who was on the other side of eternity, someone so close to my heart who was experiencing complete and total wholeness in the presence of God.

But he wasn't here. With my mom, sitting next to her, or rather getting to show everyone his joy as he played the Easter cajon in the church worship band. He wasn't sharing an Easter devotion that he wrote on a napkin at lunch. He wasn't texting us girls in a language we had to decipher because he used voice text, with either no punctuation or punctuation in inappropriate places. He wasn't here. But we were. And we missed him with our entire beings.

I couldn't understand how to proclaim "Hallelujah" on a Sunday that felt like no other. How could I say "Hallelujah" when I wasn't sure that I meant it this Easter?

The Easter cross that held my single yellow flower. 

I remember the service. I remember feeling so seen by our pastor. She spoke words of both great joy and good news but the laments of her congregation were not hidden either. The exact phrase she spoke that hit me like a two ton brick escapes me. But I know it had to have been something wrapped in the tension that speaks to us as human beings as we look up and cry out from our pits, and also open our arms wide as we sing together "My Redeemer Lives!"

I wept because for the first time in my life, Easter seemed both clouded and clarified by the deepest pain I've ever felt. As I walked my single yellow flower up to the wire cross that just a few days ago was barren, reminding us all of the death of this same Jesus, I was overwhelmed that God could be so gracious in allowing me to feel such great hope while also tending to the gaping hole in my heart. I placed my flower on the cross alongside of so many others. A hundred small hallelujahs, brought forth by the redeeming love of our very good God.

My pain that Easter was not unique. My grief at the loss of my dad, unfortunately, is a sorrow that is all too ordinary for many people. I know these questions, these feelings, have been so real for thousands of years but it makes me wonder what the beauty of offering hallelujahs on Easter Sunday means as people still awaiting our full and final hallelujah.

So this year, I ask the same question. Do we even have one hallelujah to give with the current state of our world? 

I think the eternal answer is "of course we do." But what about our grief-stricken souls that feel devastated for our neighbors next door and our neighbors across the world? Our mothers who sit in isolation alone, as widows, still dealing with the after effects of their deceased spouse, with no family to comfort them? Our pregnant friends who wonder if they'll have to deliver their awaited miracles alone? Our colleague that already has diagnosed depression and anxiety, whose mental health is severely at risk? I could go on. The list is exhaustive. What if, we don't have one hallelujah to give because despite the energy and effort we put into trying to exclaim them, our hearts are crying "How long, O Lord?"

Maybe the beauty of Easter is that throughout time, as a collective body of God's people, our hallelujahs have always been wrapped up in a mix of grief, sadness, anger, trauma, and questioning. Maybe the pinnacle of hallelujah-- the crescendo-- like the Psalter, is a collective journey we are taking as humans. Throughout the book of psalms, all the feels are present. It is not just praise. It is not just lament or petition. It is a book of poetry, with very real circumstances and language woven and intermingled with songs of praise. Yet the final and full word is hallelujah. I wanted it to be a hallelujah, but... or a hallelujah, and... because I wanted there to still be room for anguish and hurt. But as I dove deeper to try to uncover some hidden Hebrew meaning, all I could find was praise. In the end, all the sorrow will transform into hallelujahs.

Hallelujah is all that remains.

Until then, we show up. We sing the words of hallelujah songs, not because we forget about our pain, but because we hope for the Spirit to help us mean it. We hope for the Spirit to give us a tension moment where the gaping holes in our hearts are tended to while we weep tears of resurrection hope because our Redeemer lives! Maybe it won't make sense when it happens because it's just too much tension to bear. But I promise you, because of our deep wounds, our hallelujahs will mean so much more, even if we are feeling them all at once.

I pray that this Easter would hold for you an opportunity to offer a hallelujah and that somehow the Spirit would help you to mean it. I pray you would feel seen by your pastor, by a friend, a family member, or, a perfect stranger. I pray that God would tend to your wounds but also give you a hallelujah to raise. I pray you bring whatever it is you need to bring to the cross, because our Redeemer is there, waiting for you, caring for you, graciously tending to the holes in your heart and the collective trauma of our world.