When To Raise Your Own Hallelujah

I hear the song again, press repeat, let the words wash over me like a soft rain in early spring. I listen, pumping myself up with the music, press repeat once more. When a problem has been with you over an elongated period and no matter how hard you try, no matter how many scraped-kneed prayers you've offered up, all resources exhausted and the breath is labored and tired, preach it to yourself, don't give up, don't let that mountain steal your hope. Marinate in the mantra. Help is always on the way, it might look a little different, take an oddly pleasing shape, or smell like oceans of crazy, radical grace. That mountain will never ever have the last word. 

Memories of times when I thought certain mountains were unmovable, these snap shots float through my mind, a handful in black-and-white so long ago they were. Like watching the scenes at a Drive-in movie on that massive screen looming above the playground up front. God moved some powerful mountains and others He left me to make my shaky scared way to the top. And one I had truly hoped He would remove, it still remains. Either way, He keeps us company, this invisible friend, whispering gentle encouragement, don't ever give up, I'm here. I'm here.

Sometimes the view changes as you keep climbing. The terrain shifts under your feet, you stumble, cry a bit and pray again. Press repeat on the iPod. Grace says the tough climb will surprise you along the way with sweet respite, quiet knowing peace, friends who never stop praying. Maybe even a gentler gaze at the world, at yourself. A grateful exhale, a vibrant hope. And when you get back up and start that climb all over, cheer those who are trekking their own mountains, pray for them, practice radical love. Sing a little louder, drown out the bad guys with your own heart-affirming glory songs.

And those musical notes of praise, they float up into the air like delicate white butterflies, crisscrossing patterns of gratitude and joy, trailing all the way to heaven, then back to the top of the mountain. It's there at the top they gently land. And they wait until they are called upon again, from the depth of your innermost being. They will come back down, they will help you raise your own hallelujah, again, and again and again.

"God puts His ear so closely down to your lips that He can hear your faintest whisper. It is not God away off up yonder; it is God away down here, close up-so close up that when your pray to Him, it is more a whisper than a kiss." 

~Thomas De Witt Talmage~