Wounded Alleluia: Saying, praying and living when the living gets tough

A wounded alleluia is perhaps the universal song every human being sings at some time in their lives. Just this week, dear friends wrote to us that their six-year-old granddaughter was just diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer. My morning alleluias of walking in my garden, watching my flowers grow and listening to the mountain birds sing their praise, got broken.

Earlier this week, I shared time with a friend who lamented over his son’s sudden release from his job and that his vocational wilderness of job hunting has now lasted months and months. A wounded alleluia.

Maybe you, like me, watched Noah Lyles, the fastest human being on the earth right now, run the Olympic race of his life in the 200-meter race. He was the crowd favorite. He was his own favorite and it was fun to watch and pull for him, but he lost. He came in third place. A wounded alleluia. Wait, there’s more. After the race, he shared he had COVID. He ran the race with COVID and still came in as the third fastest human on the planet in the 200-meter race. A broken and wounded alleluia. How could COVID disrupt this healthy man’s quest, lifelong dream and amazing effort and training? A wounded alleluia indeed!

If you live long enough, then somehow, your alleluias will be wounded. By wounded I mean, not said with as much “umph”, not as much resound in your voice, not as much confidence, perhaps as you once prayed or sang or lived.

All along the pathway of life, wounded alleluias are heard, sung, prayed and lived. Like those old characters in the pages of Scriptures, they all seemed to try to live an alleluia but somewhere in the pathway, something happened, and life did not work—maybe God did not work—the way they thought. Perhaps, some disillusionment fostered an internal and privately held wounded alleluia. Disillusionment, slight depression or heart break all break and wound the alleluias of our souls.

That is the definition of a wounded alleluia: life has taken a turn, and the turn is different from what you wanted, needed or thought would happen. A wounded alleluia is a disruption to life—an uninvited and unwanted disruption that changes the course of the river that flows in your heart. The river still flows, but in a different way—a way you never expected or imagined. It happened nonetheless and you still, somehow, say alleluia even though there is a wound in saying those four syllables of the soul.

Here’s the thing though: People who have been dealt a blow who know the language of alleluia, will still muster the courage, converge the mind with the heart, and still say their “alleluias.” They do. We do. I do.

We don’t turn our backs. We don’t seal our lips. We don’t quit asking, seeking or begging. We don’t. Though wounded and weak by the news we’ve just heard, we still say our alleluias. It is our own human effort to keep acknowledging we are not the main character in our own stories as much as we’d like, at times, to think we are. There is this other, this one, this being that we keep saying those alleluias to no matter how hard it gets. Wounded alleluias will always be spoken because we are all wounded in some way.

I still say my own wounded alleluias. Every day—and I mean every single day, my wife, Gwen, and I turn to each other and speak out our wounded alleluias to find ONE thing we can be grateful for in this very day. It is the one way we come together, not in woundedness, but in wounded alleluias and that is a difference that keeps us sane and has kept us together.

As I write this, I am thinking of my friend Doug who is now in the fight for his life up in the mid-west. I am thinking of my friend Shane who is in the fight for his life in Texas. My friend, Sam, just lost his wife a few weeks ago. He’s a widower now. Goodness, a very, very broken alleluia for you, dear Sam! I am thinking of one grandchild, that I hold dearly in my heart in a special way. Why? Because he has a broken alleluia with learning disabilities. It goes on. I’m sure your broken alleluias go on as well.

The spiritual life is not about being protected from wounds. Surely, we see this in the very essence of the life of Jesus, Himself. Wounded he was, even though he did not want to be wounded, and prayed to God that He would spare Him. He was not spared from wounds, and we will not be either. We are humbled by them, very humbled by them. We are more prone to kneel in prayer when we are wounded, aren’t we? Perhaps, this might give a hint of why wounds might happen.

The posture of a heart that speaks the wounded alleluia is noticed by God, perhaps cherished even. Aren’t we told, God draws near to the broken hearted—to the one who stands after kneeling to say, sing and live their wounded alleluias?

About the Author

Stephen W. Smith is Co-Founder of Potter’s Inn, a Christian ministry devoted to the care of the soul of people in the marketplace and ministry. Steve and his wife Gwen have travelled the world helping people in over 80 countries understand and practice soul care. They reside in Charlotte, North Carolina and practice as spiritual directors. Steve is the author of several books. See pottersinn.com for more information.