Sunday, March 6 (Lent Week 1)


 

A Lethbridge Winter Morning above the treetops


1 O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.

3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.

4 I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.

5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

6 On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night.

7 Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.

8 My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

9 They who seek my life will be destroyed; they will go down to the depths of the earth.

10 They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals.

11 But the king will rejoice in God; all who swear by God's name will praise him, while the mouths of liars will be silenced.

 

Psalm 63:1-11

 

 

When David wrote this Psalm he wasn’t a King. He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t powerful. He was hiding in the Judean Desert from a murderously mad King Saul:  hungry, thirsty, tired, and afraid. No one would have blamed him if he had hidden in the back of the nearest cave underneath a blanket. Instead, he composed a song of praise. He chose to focus on trusting a loving God to lead him out of the wilderness.

 

Sometimes, we need to change our focus, too.

 

Monday evening, I wasn’t in the desert, thirsty, or alone, but I didn’t exactly ‘count my blessings’ as I sipped hot tea from one of the blue gold-trimmed teacups my daughter gave me for Christmas. My son patiently listened to my dismay over the fact that my iPad had been declared dead that afternoon--three months after Apple Care wore off--before I moved on to the general state of the world. “I would never have believed we could be in this place. I’m going to make a list of every bizarre thing that’s happened in the last three years -- from the pandemic, to the truckers’ convoys, to the war in the Ukraine,” I told him.

 

Could any of us have predicted the twists and turns our lives have taken in since 2019? Our world is upside down. So maybe it’s not surprising that everyday frustrations, such as broken iPads, seem harder to bear. We may not be fleeing burning cities or murderous despots ourselves, but we are shell-shocked by the crazy spinning of this world.

 

Like David, our survival and our sanity demands that we learn to trust the God who loves us more than we deserve. It is only He who sees clearly enough to lead us through bizarre and terrible times. May He be our vision now.

 

 - Jane Harris

 


 

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