As I write this column, the world seems to be spinning out of control. Vitriol, blame and hatred are bouncing around social media and casual conversation so quickly it feels as though we are living inside a pinball machine, hit from every side over and over until we just want to scream TILT and shut down.
In the midst of all this, I happened to be praying with particular psalms each morning. I’ve often found the psalms especially challenging but this week it seemed even more so, not because they required heroic feats from me but because they required something much more basic but perhaps more daunting: holding onto hope in an increasingly hopeless world and offering unending praise to God when what I’d really like to do (and sometimes actually do) is rail and cry and ask, “Why?” Of course, the psalmist often does the same, so I guess I’m in good company.
Years ago, when I was a chaperone for my son’s trip to the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indiana, the leader would chant, “God is good!” And the teens would respond, “All the time!” Today, with the world on fire, both figuratively and literally, due to human greed for money and power and control, I came back to that chant and asked myself if I could respond as joyfully as those teens once did. And part of me wondered if I even had a right to rejoice in God’s goodness in general and to me in particular in a world where children are starving and being shot at school.
How do we maintain hope and even joy in the current climate? It’s a question we pondered on the recent retreat I led at Pyramid Life Center. Oftentimes we feel guilty experiencing joy when so much of the world is suffering, or we simply can’t find our way toward joy because we are so weighed down by the never-ending headlines of hate and hardship. But joy is not happiness according to the world’s standards; it is deep and abiding trust in a God who loves us unconditionally and wants only the best for us, even when we don’t understand how “the best” will come out of what we are seeing or experiencing.
As I struggled in prayer this morning, I turned — as I often do — to music to ease my way. I chose “10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)” by Matt Redman, which says:
“The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning,It’s time to sing Your song again.Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me,Let me be singing when the evening comes.”
Can we, at the start of our day, promise to sing God’s praise when night descends even if things did not go as planned, even if we experienced physical pain, mental anguish or spiritual heartache? Some days it’s easy; other days it seems to be a monumental task. And yet we are called and challenged to walk this path, through darkness and confusion as well as light and ease, with trust that if we ask God to walk with us, we will never be alone and we will be led to where we are meant to go.
I paused in writing this column to attend Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Delmar and felt a peace descend as I settled into my pew surrounded by many others on a beautiful Friday afternoon. My mind returned to my morning psalm, “He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved” (Ps 104:5), and all felt right with our troubled world.
Our hope is found day by day, hour by hour, in the wisdom of Scripture, the persistence of prayer, the power of the Eucharist, and the belief that no matter what is happening around us, there are always 10,000 reasons to bless the Lord. Because God is good all the time.
This column originally appeared in the Sept. 17, 2025 issue of The Evangelist.
Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash
Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash
P.S. Here’s the Matt Redman song if you’d ike to listen:
