Tell me, stars, how often God has shown up for you in your cold existence. Over the millennia, how often has God been your renewal, your hope, your reason for being — or have you died already, unnoticed, your light unrequited?

Tell me, tears, if you ever grow tired of chasing God through life’s pain. Does it weary you to wash the burden of loneliness, again and again, to sink and shudder and plead for comfort that does not come, to trace the path of love’s absence?

Tell me, shadows, how many nights you will pace before giving up the search. What way can you hope to find, what new place of wonder, if God has ceded your spacious mystery to the chasm of fear? Who will want to shelter within you now?

on Psalm 77