I sat down to meditate today, and could not bring a single thought forward. Ever have a day like that? So, I concluded, this will be a dry day for me.
And then I went to Office of Readings, and the very first line of the very first psalm (118) was, I love you Lord, you are my strength. And with that line, years of spiritual living burst forth, and I remembered.
I remembered how that line took my fancy, and I made it my mantra, repeating it often: in times of joy and despair; in times of faith and doubt; in times of emotions and dryness. That line from the psalm was like my link to God, and it became the first line on my lips when anything happened to me, be it good or bad. And when I saw it this morning, all those many years tumbled before me, and I felt like I'd put my hand in the hand of my best friend, and told him sincerely (because he was now familiar to me and knew how much I'd been through) just how much he meant to me.
The psalms offer us a depth of emotion and honesty not found in our formalized prayers. Take a line, make it your own, and let it build your relationship to the Lord. You will not regret the results
I have a line from a Psalm that has always stayed with me: "I lift up mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help" - it feels like quite a pantheist view of the Divine. Similarly, I also like "In Him we live, move and have our being", which feels quite panentheist.
ReplyDelete