So my Depths Might Sing Out!

Psalm 30 is the perfect Thanksgiving Psalm with power to move us and teach us. The psalmist reports not just restored to the former life, but praising from a RE-orientation, the new beginning. This psalm, speaking of security, threat, and recovery, was chosen for the dedication of the Second Temple in the time of the Maccabees.  Jesus may well have recited this Psalm at the lighting of Chanukah candles.
         
Psalm 30 opens with thanks, then reports the distress, and closes with "You changed my mourning into dancing...." What a wonderful story, as Walter Brueggemann shows us, of orientation: "I thought in my secure days, 'I will never stumble...'; disorientation: "When you hid your face, I was stricken!"...; and re-orientation: "So my depths might sing out..."!  We're not put back the way we were, but we find new joy, with a new song, from which, "my depths sing."

A new translation* says "depths" for Hebrew word "cavad." "Cavad" has variously been translated, "heart," "liver," or "glory," putting one in mind of St. Paul's "glorify God with your body!"

The idea of "my depths" praising God resonates because so often have we psalmists cried out from the depths of suffering. Today, in a God-given new life, I praise You from my heart, from my liver, yes, from my kidneys and my deepest desires, from all my depths!

"Let all that is within me praise the Lord!"

*Greenberg, Pamela, "The Complete Psalms: The Book of Prayer Songs in a New Translation." NY: Bloomsbury, 2010.