After Suffering - Wednesday Devotional

Psalm 47 (CEB)

Clap your hands, all you people!
Shout joyfully to God with a joyous shout!
Because the Lord Most High is awesome,
[God] is the great king of the whole world.
[God] subdues the nations under us,
subdues all people beneath our feet.
[God] chooses our inheritance for us:
the heights of Jacob, which [God] loves.

God has gone up with a joyous shout -
the Lord with the blast of the ram’s horn.
Sing praises to God! Sing praises!
Sing praises to our king! Sing praises
because God is king of the whole world!
Sing praises with a song of instruction!

God is king over the nations.
God sits on his holy throne.
The leaders of all people are gathered
with the people of Abraham’s God
because the earth’s guardians belong to God;
God is exalted beyond all.

Note: Gendered language for God replaced with bracketed words.

Psalms is a collection of poems in the Old Testament that vary widely in tone and subject. Some offer praise, some express contrition, others teach, and others seem to be for special occasions like coronations or weddings. Divided into five books, Psalms was written by various authors between 600 and 150 BC.

Psalm 47 is a psalm of joy after survival. The shouts, clapping, trumpet blasts, and repeated calls to sing praise are the release of a people who have lived through uncertainty and are finally able to breathe again. Ancient Israel knew war, displacement, political instability, and fear. Psalms like this one often carry the emotional memory of communities that endured hardship together and emerged determined to celebrate life in God’s presence.

Read in this way, it changes the way the psalm’s joy feels. It isn’t shallow optimism or forced cheerfulness; it’s relief. It’s gratitude that rises after danger has passed, after mourning has eased, or after people discover they still have enough strength to gather together and sing. “Clap your hands, all you people!” becomes more than an instruction for enthusiasm. Instead, it’s an invitation to reclaim joy after seasons that tried to drain it away.

We all know that kind of joy. It appears in hospital waiting rooms when good news finally arrives. It shows up around dinner tables after months of estrangement when family members begin speaking again. It rises in communities rebuilding after storms, violence, or loss. Sometimes survival itself becomes holy enough to celebrate.

Psalm 47 reminds us that God teaches us to rejoice when life returns. The psalm imagines a community that gathers to say that fear and grief don’t have the final word. The psalm also widens that joy outward. By the end, “the leaders of all people are gathered with the people of Abraham’s God.” The celebration is no longer confined to one small group protecting its own survival, but has expanded into a shared human gathering where joy belongs to everyone. May we learn to recognize joy as the hard-earned music that rises after suffering.

- Rev. Roy Atwood