“This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” — Psalm 118:24 (ESV)
It’s Sunday morning, or Sunday evening, or some quiet pocket of the day where you found your way here — and this verse is waiting for you. This is the day the Lord has made. Not a better day coming. Not a more spiritually convenient day, a day when everything is sorted out or the circumstances have improved. This one. The one you’re actually in.
That’s either the most comforting thing you could hear right now, or it’s the hardest. If life is good, you can exhale into it. If it’s hard — if you’re carrying something heavy, if this week chipped away at you, if you woke up today already tired — then “rejoice and be glad” might sound like a demand you can’t meet. But that’s exactly why this verse has mattered to so many people for so long. It doesn’t wait for a good day. It speaks into any day, and it claims it.
What This Verse Means
Psalm 118 is the last of the Egyptian Hallel psalms — a group of psalms (113–118) that Jewish worshippers sang at Passover, at the Feast of Tabernacles, and at other major celebrations. It’s a psalm of thanksgiving coming out of real suffering. The verses just before this one describe the author crying out from distress, being surrounded by enemies, nearly falling. Verse 24 doesn’t arrive as easy praise from someone who never suffered. It arrives as a declaration after survival.
The context matters because it changes everything. “This is the day the LORD has made” is not a breezy statement. It’s a theological claim: God is the maker of this particular day. Not a distant cosmic force that wound things up and stepped back — the LORD, the covenant God of Israel, shaped this day before you woke up in it. That’s the foundation of the rejoicing. You don’t rejoice because the day is easy. You rejoice because the God who made it is present in it.
In its original use, verse 24 was sung when a procession arrived at the temple gates. The day being celebrated was a holy day, a day of gathering. But the church has always read this verse more broadly, and rightly so — because if God is the maker of all days, then every day carries the same claim. Including this one.
The Verse in Other Translations
NIV: “The LORD has made this day, and we will rejoice and be glad in it.”
The NIV uses future tense — “we will rejoice” — which shifts it slightly from proclamation to choice. We are deciding to be glad. That’s useful when the feeling isn’t there yet; it reminds you that rejoicing is sometimes an act of will before it’s an emotion.
KJV: “This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”
The King James follows the same future-tense pattern, and the older cadence of “hath made” emphasizes the completed act — the day has already been made. There’s a givenness to it. You didn’t construct this day. It was handed to you.
NLT: “This is the day the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”
The NLT is clean and declarative. What stands out here is the simplicity — there’s no qualifying language. This day. Full stop. The NLT version reads almost like a morning declaration you could say aloud before your feet touch the floor.
How to Live This Out Today
Name the day before you name the tasks. Most of us begin the morning by orienting ourselves around what needs to be done. The psalm suggests a different opening move: acknowledge that the day is a gift before you start managing it. This doesn’t take long. It’s a sentence — “Lord, You made this day” — said honestly before the scrolling starts.
Let “rejoice” be broader than feeling happy. The Hebrew word for rejoice here is giyl, which carries the sense of spinning or leaping — a physical, active gladness. But the psalm doesn’t require you to feel it. It invites you to turn toward it. If you can’t feel glad today, you can still orient yourself toward the God who made the day, and that orientation is its own form of rejoicing.
Come back to the verse when the day presses in. Psalm 118:24 is short enough to carry with you. When the afternoon goes sideways, when you hit a wall, when someone frustrates you or circumstances don’t cooperate — you can pull the verse back up. Not as a denial of the difficulty, but as a reminder that the difficulty doesn’t define the day. God does.
End the day by returning to it. Tonight, before you sleep, read the verse once more. Not to measure how well you rejoiced, but to acknowledge: this day was made by God. It happened. Whatever it held — beauty or hardness or probably both — it was given to you by the One who holds all days. There’s something grounding about closing the loop that way.
Related Verses
Lamentations 3:22–23 — “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.” Every new day brings new mercy. Psalm 118:24 and this verse belong together — the day God made is also the morning where His mercy resets.
James 1:17 — “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” This day — all its moments, its opportunities, even its interruptions — is a gift from the same God who made it.
Philippians 4:4 — “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” Paul wrote this from prison. The command to rejoice isn’t conditional on circumstances. It’s grounded in the Lord Himself, not in what the day looks like.
Psalm 16:11 — “In your presence there is fullness of joy.” The gladness the psalm invites us into isn’t manufactured. It flows from nearness to God. The most direct path to “rejoice and be glad” is into His presence.
A Prayer Based on Psalm 118:24
Lord, this is the day You have made.
Not the day I planned or the day I wished for —
this one, with everything it holds.
I choose to receive it from Your hand.
When I lose the thread of gladness, bring me back to this:
You made this day. You are in it.
That is enough to stand on.
Help me live it well.
Amen.
Questions to Reflect On
When you read “this is the day the LORD has made,” does “this” feel like a gift or a challenge — and what does that reveal about where you are right now?
What would it look like to actually rejoice today — not perform gladness, but to turn toward God in the midst of whatever the day holds? What’s one small way you could do that?
If God truly made this specific day before you woke up in it, what difference does that make to the thing you’re most anxious about this week?
Today’s prayer is waiting if you want to carry this verse into it: A Prayer for Today — Trusting God With the Week Ahead.