Blessed Be Your Name

Our family went to church yesterday. For the first time in months, we sat among a community of Christians and worshipped. We had visited this church before, but for various reasons which no longer exist we had not returned. Good friends invited us to join them and we returned. We carpooled, and our girls chatted en route. We entered church just in time to find seats before the singing began. It felt comfortable being in a crowd of people singing the songs that I know. They sang their songs with a different lilt and speed, and so it didn't feel like home. But it felt good.

The third song they sang was Blessed Be Your Name.

Blessed be your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where the streams of abundance flow
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be your name

Every blessing you pour out, I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord, Still I will say...

I sang the song in near entirety, for the first time since we moved here. It felt good to Bless His Glorious Name, and to feel at peace and at home with my life. But my voice caught in the middle of the second verse.

Blessed be your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be your name

Every blessing you pour out, I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord, Still I will say...

These were the words I wanted to sing to God a few months ago. But I couldn't. My eyes would tear and my voice would break before I could ever voice them. And now, as the sun shines on me through the smog and the world is all as it should be, I find myself able to worship again.

What type of person does that make me?

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say Lord,
Blessed be your name