By Sister Doreen, SSJD
The Anglican Church Calendar quote for June is from Psalm 36:6:
“Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.”
I often find myself watching the sky and the clouds – that great expansiveness – especially when reclining in a chair looking up – or lying on the ground looking up. While it makes me feel small in comparison, it also seems to open up a great inner vastness, a gift of feeling stretched open and ready for the more of life!
I found the Message Translation of this section of psalm 36 to be so refreshing in expressing my reaction to God’s steadfast love and faithfulness that it created not only a smile, but a warm affirming truth in that great inner vastness that pondering the sky and the clouds created. Thinking of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness to me throughout my life I can only respond in joy and gratitude: “God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, his purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; not a person, not a mouse, slips through the cracks. How exquisite your love, O God! How eager we are to run under your wings, to eat our fill at the banquet you spread …”
What can we say? How can we respond? … My own reaction to psalm 36 was ‘You are an amazing God!’ And it reminded me of a hymn in Sing A New Creation #94 Text by Laura Story and Jesse Reeves:
From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea, creation’s revealing your majesty
From the colours of fall to the fragrance of spring, every creature unique in the song that it sings
All exclaiming: indescribable, uncontainable, you placed the stars in the sky, and you know them by name. You are amazing, God. All powerful, untameable.
Awestruck, we fall to our knees as humbly proclaim, you are amazing God.Who has told every lightening bolt where it should go, or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow?
Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light, yet conceals it to bring us the coolness of night?
None can fathom: Indescribable, uncontainable, you placed the stars in the sky, and you know them by name. You are amazing, God. Incomparable, unchangeable.
You see the depths of my heart and you love me the same, You are amazing God.
This steadfast love of God – we are the beloved of the Beloved. It is interesting to ponder being the beloved, and as I did, I saw that beloved could also be broken down into ‘be loved’. It stirred many thoughts and feelings for me. Just let myself be loved, and I know that loving myself and allowing myself to be loved has been so often neglected – the easy part has been loving everyone else! It is the area where intentional work needs to be done. In an article from The Upper Room monthly newsletter “I believe God longs to nurture and heal the things that prevent us from fully receiving love – God’s love or anyone else’s. The irony is that the very things that keep us from opening to God’s love tend to be those that most need to feel love. The things we don’t want to face, struggle to share with those closest to us, hold back from a best friend, those are the very grist for the most meaningful connection with a loving God. Our most tender scars are the very place God yearns to be.”
This psalm opened my own hope and prayer – an encouragement to take my most vulnerable and tender places to our loving God, and to let myself be loved. Meister Ekhart wrote: “spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever and with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.” He went on to say “Be prepared at all times for the gifts of God and be ready always for new ones. For God is a thousand times more ready to give than we are to receive.”
An amazing God – nothing gets lost or slips through the cracks! Life is a gift, enjoyable, beautiful, pleasurable in itself. Life is a gift, never to be possessed but to be enjoyed and passed on to others. This amazing God whose steadfast love never ceases is the gift of carrying hope in our hearts. This we hold as a central truth in the midst of life these days that can cause a tendency to be discouraged in the face of so much brokenness, violence, and suffering.
Our choice – in the words of the psalm: “How exquisite your love, O God! How eager we are to run under your wings, to eat our fill at the banquet you spread” made me remember some words from The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu: “To chose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, baring one’s chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.” In the face of endless information about suffering in our world, we can lose hope if our only focus is on suffering, and the message of this psalm is a balance – God’s gift of steadfast and endless love is ours to pass on – that compassion and caring, that kindness, understanding, and wisdom – I know that it is important to remember and to see the degree to which our world is stitched together with loving kindness. And to recall “Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; not a person, not a mouse, slips through the cracks. How exquisite your love, O God!”
“Great is Thy faithfulness,” O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
“Great is Thy faithfulness!” “Great is Thy faithfulness!”
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
“Great is Thy faithfulness,” Lord, unto me!Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.
“Great is Thy faithfulness!” “Great is Thy faithfulness!”
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
“Great is Thy faithfulness,” Lord, unto me!Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!
“Great is Thy faithfulness!” “Great is Thy faithfulness!”
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
“Great is Thy faithfulness,” Lord, unto me!© 1923. Ren. 1951 Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 60188
www.hopepublishing.com
Yes! Yes! “Arise shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.” Isaiah 60:1.