It just feels good to say. Hallelujah! It is the Hebrew word for Praise Yahweh (hallelu is praise and jah is Yahweh). Allelulia is the Greek and Latin cousin, and they seem to be used interchangeably. Take your pick. But what do we do with them? What do we do with a hallelujah that sings and shouts and seems perfectly happy to be what it is without a need to explain?

Enjoy it. Hallelujah brings some joy to a day. Use it. When you do it might catch on with anyone within earshot. It doesn’t cost anything. It isn’t demanding anything from you except to take notice. It might even make you pause in the midst of a busy day or a tough moment.

Apparently the psalmist who wrote Psalm 150 used it this way. At the conclusion of the Psalter, on the heels of 149 psalms which reflected the heights and valleys of our human experience, this psalm simply, eloquently, loudly places hallelujah as an exclamation point to the whole endeavor. In the midst and in the end we praise God. That’s a pretty good ending, and an even better beginning, or even something to say at this very moment. Hallelujah!