Morning Song

Wednesday in the First Week of Lent

Your statutes have been like songs to me
wherever I have lived as a stranger.
Psalm 119:54

I am without my comfortable chair and my morning tea in a favorite mug. I am without my prayerbook. I find this morning’s psalms and scriptures and prayers on an app on my phone. Somehow it is just not as satisfying. I remember that I do not like traveling very much.


It is not just that I miss familiar comforts, of home and of my prayer space. It is also that I am a stranger here, even in the midst of faithful traveling companions. Visitor, guest, alien. With any of these roles comes a sense of disconnect. Like a plant relocated from another clime, I do not quite belong.


Yet the words of prayer and praise, of lament and strength, that I read from the small screen on my phone are God’s divine revelation. Holy. Sacred. Ancient. I remember that I belong in a way that transcends the strangeness of a hotel room.

In the scripture, in the call of bird, in the shape of a tree against the morning sky, I hear the Singer and the Song. I step out into the new day, ready.