Blog
Sensual
How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful! Your hair is like goats along the hills; your teeth are like shorn ewes that have been washed; your lips are like a crimson thread—so lovely; your cheeks are like pomegranate halves. (Song of Songs 4:1-3, abridged)
Sure, maybe it’s a poem about God. This poet wouldn’t be the first one to look at creation and imagine how it reflects characteristics of God: the wind as God’s whisper, the sunset as God’s smile, a sparkling stream as the glint in God’s eye.
It’s also possible, despite (or because of!) its location in the middle of the Bible, that it’s a poem of physical adoration, a celebration of human beauty, an unapologetic delight in the joys of sensuality. The poet gazes upon a beloved and cannot cease in adoration:
Oh my gosh, your eyes!
My goodness, your hair!
Be still my heart—your smile!
Then again, maybe it’s not either/or. To pause in delight, to celebrate a love (and to celebrate the Love of all loves), to be full of wonder, to be satisfied by the mutuality of adoration, to give thanks for the senses and sensualities that make life so acute—these too are gifts of the Creator. As the late Mary Oliver wrote about prayer: “Just pay attention … [this is] the doorway into thanks.”
Prayer: Thank you, O Love, for touch and affection. Thank you, O Life, for the flood of your beauty through all of my senses. Thank you, O Creator, for putting my spirit in flesh.
posted with the Daily Devotional
Bootstraps
God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. God determines the number of the stars, and gives to all of them their names. The Holy One lifts up the downtrodden, and casts the wicked to the ground. God covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, and makes grass grow on the hills. – Psalm 147:3-8 (abridged)
I don’t know the names of all the stars, and I’ve never tried to count them. I’m content with trusting that God has done so.
I cannot assemble the clouds or provoke them to rain. I make no claim to a green thumb, and I’m fortunate when a houseplant thrives despite my best efforts. It’s just as well that God sends rain to the grass and rivers to the sea. I certainly cannot.
Yet I have nagging doubts about God’s capacity to cast down the wicked. (See how well wickedness is thriving in the world!)
And I wonder whether God can be trusted with the brokenhearted, considering how many generations pass down the pain of unhealed wounds.
It’s not complicated to praise God’s talents with nature. It’s harder to praise God’s abilities with people. Or maybe I just find it easier to praise God for the kind of work that I can’t control. Maybe I find it difficult to trust God with the kind of work I tell myself I should control. Rain falling, plants growing, seasons changing, rivers flowing—that’s clearly God’s work. But I think I should bind my own wounds so God doesn’t have to, and pull my own pieces together so the Holy One doesn’t waste time lifting me.
Bootstraps really trip up my faith. Still I keep trying to use them.
Prayer: Great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning. Merciful God, teach me my work and let me love you for yours.
shared through the Daily Devotional
Quiet Quitting
In an office today, an employee will close their laptop at 5:00 p.m. and go home—without their laptop in hand, without a “to do” list of emails to write before bedtime, without a stack of work papers to read before returning to the office. Why? Because work that...
Ashamed
In you, O Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame. In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me. (Psalm 71:1-2, NRSV) One thing about living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the debilitating shame. The...
Plumb Line
I've been trying to climb your plumb line, O God, as if it is a measure of success or a ladder to security. When the wall showed signs of toppling, I leapt to the line to rise above it all. Forgive me. When the locusts swarmed and the harvest was threatened before it...
Kissing Calves
Idols of silver [are] made according to their understanding. “Sacrifice to these,” they say. People are kissing calves! Therefore they shall be like the morning mist or like the dew that goes away early. - Hosea 13:2-3 (NRSV, abridged) I was not raised in a Christian...
Deathbed Confession
We have done our best, O God. Well, not our best. Sometimes not even a half-hearted attempt at "best." But we have done ... something ... and of course it was never going to last because time is finite and people are too, but, O God! We didn't prepare for death when...
Praying as Jesus Taught
Thirty sparrows clamor around the bird feeder while a squirrel plots its route to the same, and I wonder if this is faithfulness: to know what is needed and to crave it solely. Give us this day our daily bread, for you will give what is good, O God. Now let us be...
Complicated Gifts
We thought it was a gift, the basket of summer fruit: strawberries red as a rose, peaches wet as the dew, watermelons sweet as your love. But no, God. The basket was a judgment of all we have taken for granted and all we have coveted for ourselves. We boast in what we...
Drunken Confession
A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning Cush, a Benjaminite. “O Lord my God, in you I take refuge. If I have plundered my foe without cause, then let the enemy pursue and overtake me.” - Psalm 7 excerpts (NRSV) Shiggaion: a drunken reel, a wildly...
If Only
if only, my god, the river of healing left its banks to come heal us where we stand with our feet stuck in the mud if only, my god, the letter of peace penned itself to the angry mobs and violent landlords who worship cruelty if only, my god, the silver coins and gold...
