This last psalm is a song not of David but of the people, a group outburst of rejoicing that quickly breaks the bounds of a church to pour out into the streets of the world and, finally, it spills over to everyone and everything that breathes.

Let God’s greatness fill you with joy and overflow into praise. If you’re breathing, you have reason to feel grateful and a way to express it in praise. Any moment can fill you with a sense of gratitude if you let it: the movement of leaves in the wind, a community solution that is more creative than any individual suggestion, the sound of laughter.

As Friends, we may feel somewhat uncomfortable with the giddy call in this psalm to dance and make music and loud noise. The psalm, however, may be calling us to something we can relate to. The praise expressed in this psalm is beyond words. The joy overflows into sound and movement because words are inadequate to convey what God has done and who God is. We may feel uncomfortable with the choices others make to praise or worship God but we cannot make that discomfort a prohibition. This psalm and others provide plenty of evidence that God appreciates all types of praise, if they come from the heart.

The spontaneity of the joy in this psalm simplifies the praise and worship. The nonsense of rituals and rules drop away in the moment. Self consciousness disappears in awareness of God. All criticism about “doing it the right way” is banished when the right way is shown to be a matter of what’s in the heart — gratitude — rather than an outward form of worship.

Though some of us cringe at the thought of being around someone praising God with loud clashing cymbals, it is good reminder that worshipping is not about perfect performance. We have permission to make noise in our praise as long as it is done with joy. There is a danger in any kind of orchestrated (literal and figurative) praise that the focus becomes the performance, not the joy and the gratitude to God. So it’s well to remember Paul’s admonition in I Corinthians 13:1 that “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Even perfectly performed music or message is nothing but noise without love. Yet this psalm tells us the opposite is also true — with love and gratitude, a clanging cymbal can sound angelic to God.