Spacious love

I will strive to follow a blameless course;
oh, when will you come to me?
I will walk with sincerity of heart within my house.
Psalm 101:1

In the morning I encounter once again the gracious gift of fashioning space to spend time with Jesus. While I try to walk consciously in his presence every day, I know I am not always mindful of the tender love which created me and surrounds me and bears me up.

You would think such love, the omnipresent and omnipotent divine, would be a hard to ignore. Nevertheless, I am quite skilled at allowing my day, any day, to be taken up with things that seem important enough to push all prayerful thoughts aside. Even as I try to live out my call as Jesus’ disciple in the world, my heart and mind do not stay firmly fixed in the presence of the sacred.

But for this moment, this sliver of time, I feel the space in which I exist expand and I am ushered in to the extravagance of God’s love for me. I hear it in the early morning bird song, feel it in the caress of the summer breeze, sense it in the city that is waking all around me. God’s love is singing, surrounding my neighbor returning home from the night shift, the construction workers setting up down the street, a plane head overhead, and those I love still asleep in the house around me. And in Jesus, loving me, calling me, inviting me to walk this day together.

I do not have this day. It does not belong to me. I may be invited to dance in it, play in it, work in it, to breathe in it, to negotiate its many possibilities, but the day is not mine. It belongs to God, as does all time.

So, I sit a moment longer, consciously enveloped in holy love, grateful, content, in awe.



Image credit: duoduo / 123RF Stock Photo

Sacred footfalls

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted

and will save those who spirits are crushed.

Psalm 34:18

I hear my daughter come down the stairs and pass by the room where I am engaged in my morning ritual of prayer and journaling. I am typically the first awake in my house, and for years my early mornings have been accompanied by the stirring of other family members. Part of my mind and heart listen for those movements: feet on the stairs, drawers opening in rooms above me, the bathroom door opening and closing. Ubiquitous signs that my daughters are up and about and greeting the new day.

I listen also for their well-being. After 17 years in this house, I can tell if a footfall is tired or joyous or anxious or hopeful.

The daughter I hear this morning is an adult now, home for the summer and teaching at a local children’s theatre. Other parents place the well-being of their children in her hands for a few hours each day. And still I am attentive to her spirit. My heart remains vulnerable. It is a small step for me to be seared by the pain of those who have lost their children. To illness, to suicide, to murder, to gun violence, to addiction, to terror.

Jesus gathered children. Jesus held up a child as the symbol of the Kingdom of God. Jesus brought children to life.

I wrap my own daughters in prayer this morning, and I cast my prayer as far as I can to encompass other children and other parents, knowing that this is not enough, but it is where I begin.

image credit: alexlinch / 123RF Stock Photo