Friday, September 30, 2016

Sitting Under a Cloud of Invitation

Friday of the 18th Week Trinity/Ordinary Time 

It is early morning with the inky blackness of these ever-shortening Autumn days.
I compensate for the dark chill with lamplight and slippers.
My heart, likewise, feels that it needs some lamplight and slippers....

I woke this morning weary, with that sense of having labored all night through stressful dreams, even though now awake, I can't remember their specifics.
I wake such a blessed woman with my needs supplied lavishly, but I wake with a heart holding heavy for the hurting, the running, the rejecting, the trantrum-ing (yes, we have one).
God is so good and faithful!
I am so grateful, and yet equally sad.

My Lauds prayer {The Divine Hours /prayer at daybreak} is a necessary one this morning, and I love what it does in positioning me for His help with what was not coming easily.
 "Let my soul wake up to praising you."

I brew coffee and sit to read the lectionary scriptures assigned for today.
God speaks to Job (Job 38:1,12-21,40;3-5)
"Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know it's place? Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the path to darkness?"

Immediately I hear God's voice over my soul. Here I am rising, feeling, thinking that the dark weariness of my emotions holds requirement of me....
That this sadness is something I must fix or suppress in order to obey God.

God ask me if I really know His power and design over my soul all that well by asking me to remember the turning of night into day....
If He commands the rotating earth and orbiting stars for the succession of each new dawn,
can I not trust Him with the rise and fall of lightness within my soul?

Emotions have received such a bad rap in my personal formation.   Distrusted and condemned or alternately elaborately worshipped, I often miss the invitation they offer my soul, and sign up for sheer mess instead. Much work has been done, but there is still much left to untangle as God shows me His way.
As always, God's way; the way of truth is higher, better, best!
He commands the light and darkness, the ups and downs, the highs and lows...both within the skies above and across the horizon of my emotional terrain.
They are His, not for us to neatly package and conquer, but for us to lean into and simply receive.
For He gives us something more of Himself in the drawing near; in the knowing and being known.

Because He is above and beyond the clouds that sometimes fill my soul, I can abandon myself to them fearlessly. Chase the eye of the storm. Ride the ride.
Does this make sense? To me, not entirely...
I still long for the sense of control that "just choosing joy" has always offered me.
It feels nice to be the one choosing.....until it doesn't.
Band-Aids cover, but they never last, and they leave behind that awful sticky outline...

I continue reading the morning's responsorial Psalm... (Psalm 139:6-11)
"Where can I go from your Spirit?
Even darkness is not dark with you; the night is as clear as the day..."

It's time to wake my kids, but there's that light and darkness again...
interposed with the inseparable closeness of His Spirit.
I mull this over throughout the triumphs and failures of the morning's beginnings.
All of the waking, feeding, supervising, reminding, comforting, cajoling, reminding again, forgiving, reminding again that suddenly culminates in 6 arms and legs unfolding themselves out of the van into the doors of a new school day.
Oh how we are all so ready for the weekend ahead...

I drive alone with raindrops falling on the windshield.
The words of my Terce Prayer (The Divine Hours / mid morning prayer) are a simple whisper alongside the rain,
"O God, come help me with all of it. Bless the work of our hands today."

There hasn't been a sudden lift of the heavy in my spirit. I am still holding weary and sad, but I am starting to see that He wants me to let that be the point of my worship for right now.
As I follow the rhythms of stopping to pray structured prayers at set times, my inner life gets gently rearranged into worship.

I will neither wallow under or suppress the sad cloud in my soul today.
I will open my hands, my eyes, my heart and look up to the One who uses clouds to channel light.
I will linger patient with myself in this place, while He gives me something of Himself I've not yet known ......
Until now.




No comments:

Post a Comment