He Turned My Mourning Into Dancing

The famous line is at the end, and I want to start with what comes before it, because the order is what makes it survivable.

Psalm 30:11 is the sentence people put on cards.

Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness.Psalm 30:11, King James Version

Beautiful. And on its own, handed to somebody in the middle of a bad year, it can land like a rebuke, because the person reading it is not dancing and now has a verse to fail at.

So read what David admits about himself four verses earlier.

And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved. LORD, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled.Psalm 30:6-7, King James Version

In my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved.

That is a confession of a specific and very ordinary kind of arrogance. When things were going well he concluded that things going well was now the arrangement. And then the face was hidden, and the sentence that follows is four words long: and I was troubled.

This is a psalm written by somebody who got it wrong about his own life, said so in writing, and put it in the songbook.

Every verb in the turning is His

Now look at the grammar of verse eleven, because this is where the whole weight of the psalm sits and almost nobody reads it slowly.

Thou hast turned. Thou hast put off. Girded me.

Three actions, and the subject of every one of them is God. There is no clause in that verse where the man does anything. He does not work up to gladness. He does not decide to dance. He does not take off the sackcloth himself, which matters, because sackcloth in that world was worn deliberately: you put it on to show grief and you kept it on as long as the grief lasted.

Somebody else took it off him.

You are not the one who has to turn this. Psalm 30:11 puts God as the subject of all three verbs and the man as the object of all three, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps that grammar intact when a tired person starts reading the verse as an instruction.

I want to name what the sackcloth is in a life like yours, because it is rarely dramatic.

It is the way the year gets arranged so there is never a room with music in it. It is the invitation answered late enough that it expires. It is that choosing anything has stopped, because choosing implies a future, and having a future has come to feel like a claim nobody has the standing to make.

That is not self-pity. It is a garment. And the psalm says a person does not take their own off.

Now the verse everybody knows from earlier in the psalm.

For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.Psalm 30:5, King James Version

I have to be careful with this one, because it gets used badly. Weeping may endure for a night is not a promise about a length of time. It is a comparison of proportions, a night against a lifetime, and anybody who has had a night that lasted four years knows the difference between a proportion and a schedule.

What the verse actually claims is about direction, not duration. It says which way the thing is facing.

You have a direction stated over you rather than a deadline set for you, and Psalm 30:5 never once names a date. The written word compares a night to a life and gives no calendar at all, and the same Spirit who kept it undated is the reason nobody can use it to time you.

And there is one more line, in verse nine, that I love because it is so undignified.

What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth?Psalm 30:9, King James Version

He is arguing. He is genuinely making a case to God on the grounds that a dead man is no use to a choir. It is not elegant theology and it is not meant to be. It is a man in trouble reaching for anything, and the songbook kept the argument in.

You were allowed to argue, and this psalm keeps the undignified version of the prayer rather than a tidied one. Psalm 30:9 is preserved exactly as it was said, and it is His Spirit who makes that a permission for somebody who has been praying carefully for years.

Then the last line of the psalm, which is the reason for the whole thing.

To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.Psalm 30:12, King James Version

And not be silent. The purpose of the turning, in the psalm's own words, is that the man would not go quiet.

You have a God whose stated purpose in the turning was that a voice would not be lost, and that is written into the last verse. Psalm 30:12 says and not be silent, and the same Spirit who put the purpose clause at the end is the reason your going quiet is not the outcome anybody wanted.