A Tender Testament

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Ancient Songs Sung Anew, grace, lift up, Lynn Bauman, psalm 121, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Your hand shall guide me

The psalm from today’s lectionary in most Christian denominations is a familiar and consoling one. At least the first two lines are generally recognized. (“I lift up my eyes from the mountains from whence comes my help. My help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth.” PS 121) The psalmist seems to begin in these verses to be stating his confidence in God and then changes his address to his listeners, giving reasons for all of us to have trust in God.

Lynn Bauman has chosen to frame the psalm as a direct address to God, a kind of testament to relationship, one might say, which I found quite beautiful this morning. I write it here as a streaming totality, a love letter maybe, that flows from the pen of a grateful servant. See what you think.

“The summits of the mountains draw my eyes and lift them upward and beyond to you, the secret source of all my being. For in the height and depths of you, in you alone, I find the grace and help I need to walk upon this path called earth and never stumble nor go astray. For you as guard and guide keep watch; you will not sleep by day or night as we do. I walk into your wakefulness; your guarding eye, your guiding hand protects and shades my way. The sun by day, the moon by night provide no better light than yours, no better shade. And in the shadows of the mountains deep you preserve me from its evils. And in this traffic of the heart you shield my life and keep my soul in all its many wanderings, until at last I come to stand, my weary feet now firm upon the borders of your land, eternity.” (Ancient Songs Sung Anew, p.315)

Omnipresence

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God is always with me, God is everywhere, God is within me, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, psalm 139, psalm 19, psalm 8, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Your hand shall guide me

As I recently mentioned, Psalm 139 is one of my top three favorite psalms (with #8 and 19). This morning it got me to musing how my image of all those qualities of God that I learned in elementary school – like omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent – have shifted for me as I have grown older. It’s not that their meanings have changed; God is still everywhere, for example, but as my image of God has changed, the effect of these words has become radically different for me. Growing up, we were taught that God is everywhere, able to see everything we do. Had I been reading the psalms in those days, I might have been in a state of high anxiety to hear the psalmist say, “If I go up to the heavens you are there; if I sink to the nether world you are present there” if I felt that I had not measured up in my behavior. I can imagine trying to find a closet or a dark corner in the barn at the end of our street in which to hide in an effort to avoid God’s disappointment in me. Believing now that God is always and everywhere with me, not to mention within me, rejoicing in our relationship, never causes me to want to hide. Fidelity on both our parts allows me to look in the mirror of God’s presence even on my worst days and find comfort there because I trust that God loves me as I am and wants me to move always toward loving myself that way as well.

Today, then, I offer the reassurance contained in some of the early lines of Psalm 139 as sustenance for the day. Rain or shine, dark or light, success or failure, God will be there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there Your hand shall guide me and your right hand hold me fast…